


Wish I Were Here

by KissTheBoy7



Category: Rent - Larson
Genre: Angst, Depression, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Self-Harm, Suicidal Thoughts, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-09-30
Updated: 2015-05-07
Packaged: 2017-11-15 09:00:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 34,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/525557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KissTheBoy7/pseuds/KissTheBoy7
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just when everything has begun settling down, just when everyone has become complacent, they realize that the rock they've all been anchored to all this time is slowly crumbling away to reveal the vulnerable man beneath. After all this time, Mark is unraveling; who, if anyone, will be there to hold him together? Warning: self harm, suicidal ideation, etc. Eventual Mark/Roger. WIP.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. How Habits are Formed

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Hey anyone whose still bothering to read my shit… Or, you know, those of you who stumbled upon this. I've been writing this in my spare time in this huge notebook in my room and it's REALLY dark, just as a forewarning. It's going to be chaptered. Thirty five to be exact. And full of all those bad things like suicide and angst and mucho Mark abuse. I'm going to update when I damn well please. This is probably my favorite thing that I've ever, ever, ever posted or ever will. I'd really appreciate feedback. Alrighty then, here we go!
> 
> Disclaimer: RENT has never been mine, much as I loathe to admit it. By default, neither are Mark or Roger. Sadface.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So! I'm 20 years old, it's August of 2016, and after five years of continuously failing to finish this damn story, I've finally picked it up again. My life has been ridiculous since I started this piece of fanfiction. I ended, and began, and then ended, several significant relationships; I left an abusive household; I dealt with a lot of PTSD and mental illness issues of my own. Over the years I've continued to receive reviews and favorites for this story, and many people have asked me to continue it. Good news - I never intended to leave WIWH unfinished. I'm reworking the plot right now, and revising each of the published chapters. When I'm done with that, I plan on continuing to update it as regularly as I am able. I'm so grateful for each and every one of you, so please leave a review or a favorite if you're still reading! It really motivates me, and I need all the motivation I can get. Thank you! -Toni

**bohemian** : _noun_ ; 

 **2.** a person who has informal and unconventional social habits, especially an artist or writer

 _synonyms_ : nonconformist, free spirit, dropout, hippie, beatnik, boho

* * *

 

Mark's breathing was slow, calm; he slid the tip of the knife along the pale, almost translucent skin of his wrists and several of the blue veins that were always so easy to see. His intense gaze followed the thin line of scarlet that trailed behind the glinting blade as his skin tore, stinging. The expression on his face was blank, brow slightly furrowed as he watched, and his hand was steady.

As always, the blood welling up from the new wound mesmerized him. He set the dirtied knife down in the sink before him and leaned heavily against the counter, holding his arm out in front of him so he could stare, transfixed.

When exactly had this become a habit? It couldn't have been so long ago that he'd started; but then, Mark mused, why were there so many scars? They crisscrossed his left arm, from the inside of his wrist to the crook of his elbow in various stages of healing. The oldest were fading, a light, shiny pink or dusty lavender, while the newest were still scabbing over in ugly, dark ruby lines. The fresh cut still glistened, hot and painful, but Mark didn't register the pain. At least, not in the way that he was supposed to.

Objectively, some part of him realized that this probably wasn't normal; he shouldn't relish the stinging of cold metal slicing into his skin, the blood that belonged in his veins rushing to the surface. No one should.

But this was _bohemia_ , right? He smiled grimly at the thought.

Everyone around him was the very fucking embodiment of the word- they were all about freedom in their choices, being unorthodox, doing whatever the hell they felt like doing whenever they felt like doing it and not caring what anyone else thought. _Mark_ was an anxious, uninspired wreck of a person, but his friends had it down. Mimi, the free spirit, the stripper who loved her job shamelessly. Roger with his guitar, who had never really bothered to pay the bills even when he had the money, because _fuck_ Benny and _fuck_ every landlord before him who had cut their power on the coldest nights of the year. Angel the drag queen and Collins the anarchist, happily and flamboyantly setting out to destroy the status quo. Maureen with her earth-shattering protests and her fluid sexuality, always so loud and proud and moving on to the next thing. Joanne, who chose this group of friends, this way of life, _despite_ her higher calling, and still managed to fit in better than him. April with her heroin, who chose her own way out, who had dreams so beautiful she'd nearly taken Roger with her.

And then there was him. Mark. The geeky guy with the camera and the uncanny ability to blend effortlessly into the background. Not an ability he'd cultivated on purpose, and it certainly ranked in his top five least favorite things about himself - but who had stopped to consider that? Who really cared? Who was he kidding, pretending to be as good, as real, as incredible as these people?

Cute, awkward, innocent _Marky_.

Oh, he _tried_ , but Mark didn't really see himself as creative. He didn't think he was all that inspirational a person, and in his opinion, neither should anyone else. They all had lit a fire in him the moment he'd met them, the second he'd set foot here, and he'd desperately tried to fan it, to be like them, like that, to use his art to stand up for what was right - but he just... couldn't. Nothing came out right. _He_ wasn't right.

He'd never fit in back home. It didn't really seem fair that he wasn't right here, either. Bohemia, that's what Collins liked to call Greenwich village, but _bohemia_ was apparently for talented people. For better people.

Not for a wannabe filmmaker from Scarsdale.

It was never going to be for him. They were never going to look at Mark, just another skinny weird suburban kid hanging around at the edges, and see an artist really worthy of being part of the group - part of the change.

Frankly, it was fucking incredible that his friends had put up with him this long.

His lips tightened as he inhaled sharply through his nose, gripping his wrist with his other hand and squeezing. Crimson began to drip down his arm, sluggishly moving towards his fingers, and he sighed before letting go, eyes falling closed for a moment.

To be perfectly honest, he was looking for reasons lately. In the beginning (oh, God, was it really only a year ago? Maybe a few weeks more? It seemed like forever he'd been doing this) he could have told you the reasons behind every distinct slash and recall, with perfect clarity, the moment and the method he used to create it.

Roger wasn't talking to him? Slash, bleed, then clean it up and hide it beneath the sleeves of his sweaters with his roommate none the wiser, eternally grateful to himself and to his mother for picking a wardrobe virtually devoid of short sleeves. There was never any reason for anyone to question it, to peek beneath the fabric and discover the gory evidence of his slow deterioration.

Mimi had another relapse? Hello, bloody bandages smuggled out to the dumpster in the alley behind their building where Roger wouldn't see.

Maureen and Joanne fighting, both of them bitching to him about the other; Roger screaming April's name in his sleep, shaking and sobbing in Mark's arms as he woke up in tangled sweaty sheets; Collins leaving again, leaving him alone - with all of these friends he didn't deserve, wasn't like, wasn't good enough for, these friends he couldn't _possibly_ keep supporting forever - leaving for another college job in another state, and Roger moving downstairs into Mimi's apartment.

Slash. Wince. Bleed. Watch it trickle out. And one more for good measure.

Except one often turned into two, and two often turned into ten. 

Before he'd stolen Roger's old pocketknife - that is to say, before this had become a regular thing - he'd had to make do with other means. The first time… He struggled to remember, but Mark was fairly certain that the first time he'd felt the urge to take something sharp to his wrist rather than just letting his emotions fester and build up inside him like a tidal wave (and wash out in stupid, ridiculous tears later, when no one was watching) was when Roger had been drawn out of the loft for the first time in _months_ by their provocative downstairs neighbor.

Oh, Mark had seen her before. Mimi. She had a sweet smile and a killer body, which he'd appreciate more if he weren't in unrequited crush hell with the worst possible person. He'd said hi to her on the stairs several times, in passing, and never, never imagined that Roger would go tripping after her a day after learning her name.

He'd been _jealous._  Of course he had! It was like a monster with fiery fingertips clawing its way into his chest, or perhaps out of it- why could this, this complete fucking _stranger_ do for his best friend what _he_  couldn't seem to no matter what painstaking lengths he went to?

* * *

**_Flashback_ **

Alone in the silence of the loft, which was dark and cold and only slightly less cluttered and dirty than the alley outside, Mark _still_ felt the need to restrict the tears burning behind his eyes. He had his dignity, God damn it. Slumped against the door he squeezed his eyes shut as hard as he could, barely breathing.

Why this? Why Now? He'd worked his ass off for months, trying to coax Roger into rehab and therapy and just out for a fucking walk, just out to lunch, just to see some sunshine for once - he just wanted to see him smile, genuinely, just once. _Once_ because of Mark, and nothing else. He just wanted to see his best friend getting better, to be his reason to drag himself through the day. Because Roger had been his for so long. Even if he didn't seem to know it.

And God, Mark wasn't asking for much. He was fine with letting this all go unspoken.

He just.... he just _wished_...

But here was another pretty girl to swipe the chance from under him. To take Roger's attention and his heart with it, all in one go, and leave Mark behind in a whirlwind. Pining behind his camera, as always. Useless, alone, unnoticed...

Something was jabbing him in the thigh, distracting him from his maudlin thoughts. It took him several miserable, dizzy moments to realize it and when he did he fished it out of his pocket, still fighting for the elusive emotionless he craved. He squinted at the shape cupped in the middle of his palm.

The jagged teeth of his apartment key shone dully in the minimal light, grim and tempting.

For a couple of seconds, Mark just stared at the little silver instrument in his hand. Contemplating. A dark thought took root in his mind and wouldn't let go, despite the pathetic level of desperation that it implied in him. A flurry of protests formed in response, a last-ditch defense mechanism.

What if someone found out? Was it even safe, doing something like that with a _key_? Living in the city slums with four HIV positive friends, including of course the one that lived with him, occasionally even shared a bed with him when it got too cold for both of them- it was something to think about. It was probably dirty…

But, suddenly, the urge was maddening. It was something he _shouldn't_ do, something that he knew in the back of his mind that Roger would probably murder him for even considering.

And yet…

He frowned to himself- what would Roger care? He was lovestruck- well, probably lust-struck- by some stripper downstairs. He sure as shit wouldn't notice one little gratifying mark…

Making up his mind, Mark brought the sharpest part of the key- which was still terribly dull- to his bare wrist, pulling one sleeve up just enough to expose the pale skin. The pocket-warm metal was almost comforting when it should have been foreboding. It took his mind off of Roger in any case, off of the irrational sense of betrayal that he felt towards his roommate, off of the weight of all of his friends' worries on his shoulders and the memories constantly swirling around his head. (Scarsdale and the hospital and his mother's despairing wails echoing off of the inside of his skull...)

He couldn't for the life of him understand what exactly was making him upset at this very moment, upset at Roger and himself and the world, but either way-

Unreasonably terrified, he pressed down more firmly.

Mark licked his dry lips nervously. It wasn't biting down the way he had hoped and maybe, _maybe_ this was a stupid idea… Tentatively, he dragged it almost like a saw in a horizontal line across his inner wrist. A satisfying albeit faint sting followed and left the skin pink and irritated.

It was almost surreal. Every second was a thrill of adrenaline, and he couldn't help but wonder: was this what it felt like to shoot up, chase that high? Mark thought, feeling ridiculous for even making the comparison, that it might be the same crazy roller coaster feeling that Roger had been addicted to not even a year ago. His emotions were at their peak and he knew what he was doing, knew it was stupid and impulsive and God but it made him a hypocrite - but it just felt so good to have a distraction.

No one was going to find out anyways, right? Roger and Collins and Maureen, they wouldn't have a clue about one tiny, insignificant scratch.

The thought of Roger made his eyes burn again, threatening salty tears, and he tensed before more forcefully dragging the key across his sensitive skin. Why the fuck was this affecting him so _much_? Old thoughts, from high school and his early days in the loft, floated uninvited into the forefront of his mind and he shuddered, swatting them futilely away.

Again, again, again- he could see the thin layers of skin tearing away and it sickened him, at the same time bringing a strange, morbid thrill. Something forbidden to him, perhaps not in words, and he knew that any one of his friends would shit a brick if he ever so much as hinted at it.

Fucking Roger. It always came down to him, didn't it? Mark didn't like to think too hard about why, about the tears that he'd shed that first night that April had come home with the rocket, a baggie of foreboding white powder in hand. He didn't even want to _acknowledge_ the number of times he'd found himself with his roommate's stubbly, smirking face at the forefront of his mind during long showers and late nights in bed, alone.

There were always just too many fucking things in the way, and Mark wasn't technically sure he was gay anyways, and so- so, none of these emotions even existed.

They _couldn't_  exist. They _shouldn't_. They could burn in hell with him, because as far as Mark was concerned, _he_ shouldn't exist either.

That girl downstairs with her sultry smile and her blue rubber pants… He'd seen the track marks on her arms, despite the fact that she could barely pass for sixteen, that she was probably just another runaway teenager with good looks and daddy's stolen cash in her pocket who'd gotten in way over her head. And damn it if he was going to go through it all again, right when Roger had finally stopped shaking and sweating and vomiting, just when he thought that things were getting back to whatever normal was.

It would be his secret. The only thing he'd ever done just for him, for no one else's sake.

The jagged teeth bit into him, more layers ripping away in that inch long line, thick and turning splotchy red. It was starting to feel raw, actually burning, and the pain was all he could focus on. No more images of his best friend and the forlorn, bitter look seemingly permanently plastered on his face - or the happier one, which was somehow more painful to see now, when he was prancing away with that little Latina on his arm.

No more. Nothing left to plague him while he tried to just forget.

He gasped as he drew blood, feeling the dull piece of metal finally break through to his delicate veins. (Nevermind that the imagery made him sick to his stomach.) It rose slowly to the surface in an irregular pattern of crimson. Mark forgot for a moment what he was doing, why he was doing this in the first place. His tears and his strange, unwanted jealousy dissipated as he stared curiously down at his newly marred wrist.

They didn't look like cuts, exactly, but they didn't look accidental either, so he concluded that he was utterly fucked if anyone decided to pay attention. Not that he thought they would. (Not that he even blamed them for it, either.) Layers of skin peeled raggedly, unevenly away from the blood beading up and staring him accusingly in the face.

Minutes passed and Mark felt himself let out a shaky breath, blinking slowly as if waking from a trance. His eyes widened as the realization came crashing down on him all at once, an avalanche to choke him, to send terror thrilling down his spine.

What had he _done_? Had he really, actually, _finally_ succumbed to that hopeless feeling, that desperation?

Yes. He had. He'd hurt himself, bled- if only just the little bit- for those stupid emotions, those stupid feelings that he wouldn't let himself cry over anymore.

Fighting back the rising panic, fear of himself, fear of his own mind, Mark straightened out of his slump against the loft door and slowly stood, swallowing the lump in his throat trying to strangle him. An odd sort of calm descended as he stood, still clutching the key in his hand, and he walked to the bathroom in measured steps, kicking off his shoes as he went. He thrust his arm under the tap and allowed the unfiltered water to run over the wound, grabbing a bar of soap from the counter and lathering it under the gentle stream, rubbing the suds into the evidence of his lapse of control almost mechanically.

The rock that he always envisioned himself clinging to for strength in bleak times like these was beginning to crumble. But as long as he ignored the signs he could, he told himself, continue on as usual with no one the wiser- not even himself.

 _Alright then,_ he rationalized. He'd cut himself. Just the once, and he'd never do it again.

Mark dried his throbbing arm off, nodding to himself as he justified it, and went to find his camera. He pushed the disturbing episode out of his mind as he prepared to go out and shoot some more film for the documentary that, like all the others, he knew would never be finished.

* * *

 

 _Never again._ Right? Mark laughed helplessly to himself at the thought, opening his eyes again and numbly surveying the brand new cut on his wrist. One to add to the collection growing all the way up his arms. The urge to continue, not to stop after _just one_ , was stronger than ever and he itched to draw the blade over his arm one more time.

The sound of a metal door sliding open, however, put an end to his morbid ritual.

"Mark? You home?" Roger's hoarse, overworked voice called through the silent loft. Mark inwardly cursed, rushing to clean off his knife before pocketing it, hastily moving to wash out his newest self-inflicted injury. He fumbled with the soap and placed it back on the counter, splashing water carelessly up to rinse one last time and pulled his sleeve back down almost before the suds had washed away, and headed out of the bathroom to greet his friend.

"Yeah, how was practice?" he asked, feigning nonchalance and pretending to zip up his fly. Nothing out of the ordinary, nothing out of place. He shoved down the guilt that rose up each time he faced his roommate after one of his sessions - it didn't really make any sense. Why would Roger even care? He had his band, his life, and even without his Mimi and the flickering light of her candle he certainly seemed to have inspiration. To Mark, at least, it seemed like Roger was writing something new and spectacular every day now.

He didn't care about Mark. Not that much. Not enough to pry, or to try to stop him from destroying himself even if he did manage to notice. Mark shouldn't have to feel so guilty for deceiving him.

 _It isn't deception. He never asked, and you never lied_ , his mind whispered treacherously, and he had to agree. He plastered on a smile as fake as the bottle blonde color of Maureen's hair and ignored the ache he felt as Roger's eyes lit up in response. He sat back and watched with carefully constructed enthusiasm as Roger launched into a play-by-play description of this night's jam session with the old band, and tried not to taste the bitterness sticking to the back of his throat.

Every day, every single fucking day, he was reminded of their differences. Roger had joined back up with two of his old bandmates months ago. He'd gotten back on the horse  - not like nothing had ever happened, but like it couldn't stop him regardless. And what he was making, what was practically pouring out of him nowadays, was beautiful and heartwrenching and - and nothing like anything Mark was ever going to be able to produce, or even conceptualize.

Unconventional he may be, but never in the right ways. _But that's fine,_ he thought distantly. He'd given up on bohemia months ago, had sat back to just watch, and now it was just a matter of time until he phased out completely. He just had to hold out, to pretend that he was his old self. That he still believed, or cared. 

Roger, it seemed, had found his happiness. _Good for him._ He was finally content with his life, with himself. 

And as the scars crisscrossing Mark's wrist underneath his sweater sleeve suggested - unbeknownst to his roommate or anyone else - Mark had not.

 


	2. What's the Line?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This piece of fanfiction is extremely personal to me, as a chronic self-harmer of over six years who can never stick to quitting. Most or all of Mark’s intrusive thoughts will be italicized. No one should take any of the things he tells himself in this story to heart – Mark is mentally ill, and these intrusive thoughts don’t reflect reality. If you are reading this and you struggle with mental illness, intrusive thoughts, or self harm, then I hope that this resonates with you and you enjoy reading. If any of this triggers you, please redirect yourself to another one of my stories without graphic self harm! I hope that everyone is enjoying. I am definitely enjoying revising this, although it’s slow going.

**“Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or serotonin-specific reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), are a class of drugs that are typically used as antidepressants in the treatment of major depressive disorder and anxiety disorders.”**

 

* * *

 

"God help me…" Mark muttered, inwardly shouting abuse at himself for somehow managing to lose the _only_ umbrella they owned in the middle of April.

It had been three months to the day since Mimi had passed away in that hospital bed and Roger was, predictably, moping in his room. He'd been almost alarmingly cheerful for the first month after Mimi's death, but these past few weeks he’d started backsliding – withdrawing more and more, the color leeching out of his face, almost painfully similar to how things had been after April.

Well. It was possible, of course, that it was the rain that had him down. But it made Mark nervous enough that he didn't really want to go out to lunch with Collins anymore as he'd promised.

It seemed sometimes like all he really did was dote on Roger, but then again that was nothing new. He'd been doing it since April's death, before even, when Roger was in constant danger of overdose. And he didn’t really mind it – it’s not as though anyone was actually asking him to, he just _wanted_ to, had to – except times like these when he's anxious to get out of the stuffy loft and Roger is pulling a Roger on him and making it difficult.

He rummaged through his dresser drawers in a final attempt, rolling his eyes at his own sparse wardrobe. It was debatable, actually, whether or not the bulky black contraption would even fit inside his dresser but he'd run out of places to look and he was supposed to meet Collins at the café in half an hour. He'd hoped, earlier, that maybe the rain would taper off before he had to leave but one glance at the dreary gray sheet over the window made it very clear that he was going to be drenched the minute he stepped out the door.

Great.  _It must be Monday._

Well, there wasn’t much he could do. He was born and bred in New York, he should have been used to this by now. He'd just have to brave it with his hood up in a futile attempt at blocking out the chill and make a run for it. Once, God knew how many years ago, he remembered his sister telling him matter-of-factly over the phone that running in the rain only got you fifty percent wetter. That was just too bad, because he didn’t have a lot of time to go anyways.

As he felt into the corners of his boxer drawer pointlessly in the last vestiges of his sad attempt, Mark's hand brushed the smooth, cold plastic of a bottle that he was almost certain he'd thrown out over three years ago. It was empty, covered in dusty old fingerprint smudges and obviously long-untouched, but it still sent a thrill of anxiety through him as he pulled it out and stared at it, stomach doing curious flips.

**COHEN, MARK.**

**30 VALLEY RD, SCARSDALE NY 10583**

**FLUOXETINE HCL 20MG CAPSULE.**

**TAKE 1 CAPSULE BY MOUTH ONE TIME DAILY.**

**REFILLS: 2**

_Lovely_ , he thought. _The ghost of hospital stays past._

Aggravated, he itched absently at his wrist beneath his sweater sleeve and stowed the bottle away, back where he'd found it- it wasn't doing anyone any harm there for now, and he might as well wait to dispose of it until he found the others. He couldn’t very well waltz out fifteen minutes late to his lunch date with Collins with his arms laden with orange prescription pill bottles.

Just as he shut the drawer brusquely and strode out of the room, tensing and bracing himself for the coming unpleasantness, he brushed Roger in the hall and found himself abruptly shoved back into the wall. Eyes flashing up to Roger’s wry expression, Mark tried not to let his face show exactly how close he’d come to swallowing his tongue in surprise and clutched the black umbrella that had been thrust unceremoniously into his hands.

"Hey- where did you find this?" he spluttered. Roger just raised an eyebrow and shrugged noncommittally.

"Nowhere. Go, I know you're running late."

Of course he did. Roger always seemed to know when Mark was having a minor crisis, like a sixth sense. Mark wondered sometimes if it was just that he knew him so well, or if Roger was paying more attention than he seemed to be.

But if he continued on that train of thought he would only make himself paranoid, so he decided to leave it at that, nodding hurriedly, a look of eternal gratefulness crossing his face as he scurried to the door.

“Thanks, Rog, I’ll be back,” he sighed, pulling his jacket on along the way. He was still only halfway shrugged into the second sleeve as he exited and pulled the door shut behind him with the metallic grating noise that they've become so accustomed to.

“Tell Collins I said what the fuck.” The words followed him, muffled through the door and lost in the echo of his footsteps on the metal staircase.

Roger’s eyes hadn’t left him until the door had slammed shut between them, and it’s not until he’s halfway down the stairs that Mark stops feeling irrationally hunted. Self-consciousness, Mark mused to himself, was nauseating enough to put him off his lunch all by itself. But he probably wouldn’t get away with using _that_ as an excuse to skip out, either.

On the bright side (he was proud of himself for even bothering to look for one), it was easy to keep his mind off of the bottle when he was struggling with the rusty old umbrella, trying to get the damn thing open. When he finally succeeded he was just grateful that it didn’t immediately appear to have been devoured by moths- the last time he'd checked, most of the things in his closet were more holes than fabric.

Not that he cared about his clothes, really... He didn't care about the state of his own body much less what he wore over it- his only concern was that, without all of those long sleeves to fall back on, he might be exposed.

None of them were ever meant to find out anything about his little problem, and he didn't plan on letting it slip. Not to Roger, not to the guy at the laundromat, no one. Mark was an adult and he could make his own decisions about his body. It wasn’t some desperate cry for attention, or something.

He wasn't _that_ pathetic.

As he walked, though, the thoughts kept drifting past. They were so insistent sometimes, so _fucking_ pushy; poking and prodding and _tormenting_ him with scraps of the past that he should have left behind in Scarsdale. Not that he hadn’t tried. _The pills; his mother’s tear-streaked face; the hospital room. The crisis therapist. Benny._ Years had passed and instead of fading into an achy blur it had become a living nightmare that he couldn't shake off – left him trembling at night, curled into himself choking back the tears, pressing the biting metal firmly to his wrist to ward them off because anything was better than crying.

Thoughts like that weren't supposed to follow him this loudly in the daylight hours, but lately things had been slipping just a little bit. Enough for Mark, with his obsessive tendencies, to notice and feel increasingly, incredibly anxious about it.

He was _Mark_ – he was the center, the rock, the one that everyone could vent to and count on. The _safe_ one. He _had_ to be the least fucked up person here, right? Mimi had said so once, jokingly, and he hadn’t known how to handle the surge of guilt-relief-fear that swept through him as he laughed in nervous agreement.

He was supposed to be strong, for all of them, and at one time he had _almost_ thought that he was. That he could be.

But apparently not.

Strong people didn't shake when their friends weren't looking.

Strong people didn't have needless scars lacing up their arms like ugly red shoelaces.

He really needed to pull himself together before he got to the café, before Collins saw his expression and began the inquisition he dreaded so much. Every day was so full of fear, a foreboding tremor that started from somewhere deep in the center of his chest every time somebody made eye contact with him –

_Do they know? Can they know? What am I going to say?_

It wasn’t very rational, but again, most of the things Mark thought to himself those days weren’t. He was a stoic person. He had to be. He had watched so many people drop dead around him, people he had loved, and it had chipped violently away at his emotional foundation.

And people looked to _him_ for an anchor, when things like that happened. What could else could he do but try to be that? Mark had no _choice_ but to be a great liar, and it didn’t take much to school his expression after all of the funeral services and memorials he’s sat through with a blank, sorrowful face and dry eyes.

Despite all of that, he couldn’t still his thundering heart as he turned the corner and spotted the familiar neon letters on the face of the Life Café glowing bright and defiant against the cloudy backdrop of the city in the distance, above the sea of dark umbrellas and frowning faces. Vaguely, Mark realizes that his face is set in an identical scowl, and he hastily rubs over his mouth with his free hand as though he can scrub it away. Not that he really needed to justify being in a bad mood on a gloomy day like that one, but one could never be too careful where Collins was concerned. If Roger had a sixth sense for when Mark was struggling, Collins had a PhD, and it was impossible to lie to the man once you had his full attention.

He’d dig up everything if Mark gave him half a chance. And Mark wasn’t interested in reliving the worst moments of his life with anyone else.

A man in front of him abruptly stopped and turned back, and although Mark knew that he was looking through him and not at him, he still instinctively stepped around him and walked a little faster. He could taste blood where he’d bitten halfway through his lip. _When did I do that?_ If there was anything that Mark didn't want to be, it was noticeable. Once upon a time he'd wanted attention- way back, when Roger had been the earth and he had been the moon, hopelessly orbiting in an attempt to help however he could, never drawing as close as he'd like to be – and now he liked to think that he's grown out of that childish tendency.

He's doesn't need anyone anymore. He just needs himself and the comforting presence of his switchblade, which was a constant weight in his pocket. Just that hard, slim rectangular outline on the outside of his thigh, where he could touch it under the table to calm himself.

The scabs itch. Instead of the empty Prozac bottle, he focuses on that, and although it becomes painful to resist he'd rather not start gushing blood when Collins was waiting for him just on the other side of the café doors.

_Stop thinking about it stop thinking about it stop thinking about it –_

_You don’t need it! You don’t need **anything!**_

He didn’t disappoint – a fraction of a second after he had stepped inside, umbrella half-open and dripping as he’s hit with a blast of wonderfully warm air, Mark found himself pulled into a back-breaking bear hug by his much taller friend.

"You made it! Good man, Cohen.” Mark pulled out of his embrace with an awkward stumble that made Collins laugh, probably because it was so damn familiar.  _Now_ was the time to muster that smile he hadn't dared before, an ache that's becoming all too familiar growing in his chest. Collins fixed him with a blinding smile in return and reached out to snap the umbrella closed, plucking it out of his hands and setting it in the rack beside the door.

"I thought it would be rude to cancel without calling," Mark said meekly as he handed it over, even as he felt that irrational anger flare up beneath the façade.

_Rude is expecting someone to crawl through the rain for some lousy lunch on their only day off._

Almost instantly he was horrified with himself, his insides twisting in revulsion that he was even _capable_ of thinking something like that about his longtime friend; even though he knew (well, he hoped) that he hadn’t actually spoken the words, he winced apologetically at Collins’ questioning look as they stepped up to wait in the queue.

A group of teenagers was ahead of them, two girls with short-cropped hair holding hands and a boy shyly tugging at his earring while he complained about his job cashiering at the Blockbuster Video near his house. His voice kept fading in and out of Mark’s consciousness, distracting him. He couldn’t focus on whatever Collins was saying. He was too busy being angry with himself.

 _Fuck._  This was happening more and more often lately. Possibly, it was just a testament to just how awful a human being he was. No wonder Roger didn't want him, when he was capable of thoughts like that. Collins had obviously _wanted_ to see him, or he wouldn't have trudged through the rain.

He had a lot more to lose than Mark if he caught a cold, and it _had_ been a couple of months since he’d found the time to visit. Mark ought to be more grateful.

Somehow, though, as he slid into a booth opposite his friend, Mark didn't feel at all comforted by this. He felt as unwanted as ever, he realized – and then paused to wonder why he was so goddamn inconsolable.

Suddenly, Collins reached across the table and playfully swatted at his hair to grab his attention again.

“Fuck! Sorry,” Mark squeaked, blinking rapidly to try and bring himself back to the present. Luckily, Collins didn’t look at him strangely right away – the kids that had been in front of them in the line did, though.

One of the girls caught Mark’s eye and gave him an apologetic smile before covering her mouth and quickly turning back towards her friends. He struggled not to scowl.

"So, _Marky_ ," Collins teased, leaning back and crossing his arms behind his head. His eyes, though, were searching Mark's face and it was making him too nervous to relax, crossing his legs and squirming across from him. He grimaced at the sound of his least favorite nickname but didn't have the energy to launch a protest, just waiting for the rest. "What have _you_ been up to? I've been out of the loop."

_Maybe you shouldn't have expected the loop to stretch all the way to Michigan for you._

“Nothing exciting… Um. I mean…”

Actually, Mark reflected, it was probably a good thing that Collins hadn't been around recently. He was too sharp, with an uncanny eye for detail – he was too similar to Mark that way, and certainly would have noticed Mark’s slow-motion trainwreck of a descent into the pits of depression. Just sitting this close to him, feeling his dark eyes to rake over him with the casual assessment of an academic makes him feel naked.

Where were his sleeves now? It felt alarmingly as though Collins could see right through them if he wanted to.

God, but it would be the _worst_ time for Collins to develop super powers.

A server appeared briefly, introducing herself as Caitlyn with a helpful point to the nametag on her chest, and asked if she could get them anything to drink. Mark jumped on the chance to break eye contact, asking for water. Collins asked for the same, flashing his charming smile, and she bustled away, leaving Mark back in exactly the same awkward position he’d started in.

_Damn it._

Collins cleared his throat helpfully. “Well? Come on, Cohen, I want to hear it, don’t think you’re boring me. I grade essays for a living. And none of my students have half your crazy imagination.”

The compliment only served to make him grimace, though he tried to suppress it. In typical Mark fashion, things were getting awkward. Or maybe that was just his own skewed perception. Cursing his own poor social skills either way, he fumbled for the words that would shift his friend’s focus to something more neutral.

"Ah- nothing really. _Really.”_ He adds emphatically at Collins’ raised eyebrow, allowing a small smile to reassure him. That’s really beginning to hurt his cheeks. “It’s been… boring, honestly. I’m incredibly jealous of your life right now. I’ve just been, um. Well. You know me. Same old… Filming. Working. Getting bitched at for reminding Roger to take his meds."

"How's he taking it?" The concern on Collins' face shifted subtly, and Mark let out a silent, relieved breath.

There was little room for misinterpretation, and it was a loaded question. After April, Roger had overdosed almost six times before Mark had finally cut him off, given him the ultimatum that Collins had suggested – get clean or get out. None of them knew how many of those times Roger had been trying to off himself and how many were just overzealous attempts to escape, or dull, the constant, maddening grief – which he was sort of known for handling poorly, in the first place.

Either way, the second dead girlfriend could easily have tipped the scales, and everyone – especially Mark – had taken to watching him carefully out of the corners of their eyes for any infamous Roger Davis-typical behavior since the funeral. So far there hadn’t been enough to start worrying.

But he wouldn’t be Mark if he didn’t obsess over the littlest things.

"He's actually not been bad," Mark admitted, glancing down absently at the laminated menu. He wasn't really hungry- he was rarely hungry anymore, which he would find more concerning if he gave a shit about anything. "The weather's got him down, I think? But other than that…"

"Got a new band?" The professor arches an eyebrow in slight amusement and the endearing gesture – something that he'd taught Mark a long time ago that to this day aggravated Roger to no end, entirely because he couldn't do it – made Mark's chest quiver with an odd nostalgia. It took him several extra seconds to compose a response, preoccupied with an inexplicable bout of nausea.

"Yeah… He doesn't like them much, but it gets him out, you know?"

There, that sounded natural. Satisfied with himself, he looked away again and allowed himself to lapse into silence, picking something random and cheap off of the menu and setting it aside disinterestedly. His eyes strayed out the window into the gray cityscape, the ducked heads and muted patters of rain. It was alarmingly descriptive of his mental state. Cold, bleak, and vaguely downtrodden.

When the waitress returned with their drinks, he did finally force himself to look back at Collins, who was halfway through rattling off his order. Mark bit his lip and managed to order a side salad without ever looking up, too anxious to care if the girl thought he didn’t like her. She left again without a fuss. His friend was wearing that speculative expression that Mark had always hated so much – he had to forcibly clamp a lid down on his own hysterical assumptions that  _yes, yes he knows, he knows and now they'll all know-!_

That was ridiculous. He was being ridiculous. He needed to find his center.

"W-what?" he asks nervously, trying to smile. It probably looked forced, but it was too late to try and fix it. Collins just shook his head, furrowing his eyebrows just slightly as though regarding an impossibly difficult equation and trying to figure out where to start.

"Mark… are you feeling alright, man? You seem kinda pale," he asked, sounding so genuinely concerned that guilt clawed Mark's guts to ribbons all over again.

“I’m always pale.” He gave his friend a half-hearted grin, shrugging. There wouldn’t be any point in worrying him. It would pass… it had always passed before. His inner monologue agrees, scathing.

_You just need to get a fucking grip. What’s wrong with you?_

“You don’t always look this beat. Don’t give me that crap, Mark.” Collins frowned, and Mark could almost feel him starting to dig. He panicked.

“I’ve already got a mother to nag me, but thanks for the concern.” He swallowed a wave of too-intense emotion, wishing he had anything else to focus on. He ends up staring at the back of Earring-Boy’s head over Collins’ shoulder.  Why couldn’t he have waited until we had our food? “I just had a rough week. You know, service industry bullshit, it doesn’t really get better over the years.”

“I know you better than that,” Collins said firmly. “You know, you can talk to me, Mark. I ain’t gonna judge you.” His eyes were beseeching. It was almost physically painful to deny him the simple intimacy of sharing, but all of the progress he’d made in the past few years on that front had chipped away and crumbled under the force of his recent mental break. He couldn’t even begin to verbalize all of that

He forced a laugh, words slightly sharper than he'd intended as he shook his head.

"I'm fine, Tom." He never really called him Tom, but this was sort of a warning. If he was even  “What have you been doing, aside from grading papers? C’mon. Michigan has to be beautiful.”

Collins frowned, obviously still worried; but he visibly backed down after a long moment, nodding shortly and then mustered another smile as he tried to restart their stinted conversation.

The waitress returned once more with their plates. Things eased a little after that.

* * *

 

Lunch was at least a _little_ better than the short, awkward affair that Mark had expected it to be, but as they parted – Collins nearly broke his ribs _again_ , and blew him a teasing kiss as he backed out into the rain with a neon-rainbow umbrella that makes one of the girls from earlier giggle where she’s standing outside the bathrooms – the ache in his chest returned with a vengeance. Whatever he had wanted out of the reunion, it obviously wasn't what he got.

And whatever it was that he wanted, he reasoned with himself, he probably wasn't _ever_ going to get it – so he might as well forget about it. Right?

The nausea had disappeared, replaced with a slightly uncomfortable but terribly familiar hollow feeling deep in the pit of his stomach. He didn’t want to think about it.

The only other thing to think about, however, seems to be that bottle looming closer than he ever wanted it to be in his mind.  _Fluoxetine hydrochloride._  He shuddered to even think about how those words had sounded the first time he’d heard them in a clinical proposal. His grip on the plastic handle of the umbrella tightened, but he forced himself to follow the echo – because anything was better than feeling empty, even this.

It was so long ago, but for Mark it was all still crystal clear. It was the pain that made it sharp, he thought to himself grimly, a morbid smile twisting his lips.

He kept his head down to keep anyone from seeing it; no matter how many times he walks down this street, he still expected someone to take one look at him and try to rush him to the psych ward.

Pain was the entire problem. It was good for his memory, he was convinced, because all of the most vivid things he could remember were embedded in his mind on a scale of clarity, from crystalized agony to that grey, miserable ache.

Benny had been there, he remembered that. His mother, too, and his father had been on the way. The paramedics had said later that he was lucky to have been caught while they could still pump his stomach but he didn't  _feel_  lucky, not at all. He felt like a fucking failure.

Still, he plastered on that smile that he'd grown so accustomed to wearing like a mask as the years worn on and insisted he was fine.

It wasn't like they could prove otherwise.

He took the stairs one at a time, dragging his feet, pulling the umbrella shut again with some difficulty. Now that he thought about it (now that he was almost home, going to have to face Roger again, force himself to act when he was never meant to be an actor) he really, really didn’t want to go back. Just being inside the building felt claustrophobic then – Mark felt sweat beading up at his temples and stopped abruptly to lean against the wall, halfway up the third staircase, releasing a shaky breath.

 _For fuck’s sake_ , he couldn’t face Roger having an anxiety attack. Over nothing! What the hell was wrong with him lately? He’d stomped this all down for years – he’d ignored it, he’d swept it under his mental rug, it should have died there.

He glanced up the center of the staircases and toward the ceiling, trying in vain to measure out his breaths like they’d taught him all those years ago.

_Pointless… Breathing exercises have never worked for me, it’s been ten years, give it up…_

Nevertheless, he was able some minutes later he drags himself back upright – he had no idea how long he’d stood there paralyzed, no one has emerged from any of the doors (it’s the middle of the day, everyone is at work) to disrupt the fragile stillness in the air that he’s clinging to, though he could hear the muffled laughter of a woman and what sounded like two young children in the apartment nearest him, soft thumps that he would guess to be roughhousing.

The memories were always a bit easier to deal with when he approached them deliberately. He took a painfully deep breath, felt his ribcage press firmly against his lungs, and resumed his reluctant trudging upstairs to the loft.

The pills he remembered, too, but not as clearly. The pills were numb rather than painful and they made his memory foggy but he still manages to dredge up the memory to torture himself with.

He remembered waking up every morning and taking one with breakfast, swallowing them and making a face. Breakfast, they had lectured him, was normal. They just wanted to help him get back to normal. He hadn’t had the heart to tell anyone that he hadn’t eaten breakfast before the whole ordeal and normal was somewhere he'd never been, so he couldn't exactly go back to it. He just swallowed and winced and went on with his day, because that's what he should do, was expected to do, and hadn't he always been eager to please?

When he reached the top of the stairs, he opened the door and tried futilely not to think about the key in his hand. He’d had enough of remembering for the day. The loft was silent, as it frequently was lately, but what he really wanted to know was whether or not Roger is sleeping.

As much as he tried to pretend that it didn’t mean anything, he tried not to cut himself when Roger was home and awake. He didn’t honestly know what he would do if Roger ever walked in on him with a blade to his wrist.

Slowly, cautiously, he set down the still-wet umbrella and strained his ears for the sounds of the acoustic, or Roger’s characteristic humming. Nothing. There was a mostly-empty mug of coffee on the metal foldout table in the kitchen, which looked as though it hadn’t been touched in at least an hour.

Encouraged, Mark crept down the hall practically on his tiptoes and leaned around the doorframe to peer into Roger’s bedroom – one glance was enough to Peeking into his room he's ease the hard, tense lines of his shoulders, and he exhaled in relief, rubbing the shape of the blade through his jeans compulsively.

Roger was sprawled out across the bed, fully clothed and presumably asleep, if the guttural snores issuing from his slack mouth were any indication. This had been a common sight a couple of years ago, so much so that Mark had to blink away his instinct to search out the empty baggie he was certain he’d find nearby, on the floor or on top of the bedspread beside him. Roger _never_ slept during the day anymore, not since withdrawal, but Mark slunk away without questioning it, too caught up in his relief to feel truly guilty yet.

_He’s probably just not feeling well, anyway. The band’s not doing well, the weather is shit, and Mimi…_

He didn't have time to be worried about whether or not Roger was getting sick right now. He can do that later – its all he ever fucking does. Everything feels too bright and too real, and he slips a hand into his pocket to clutch the soothing-smooth handle before he’s even got the bathroom door shut behind him.

It was all too much, the past and the present and the desolate future stretching before him, and he didn’t have the pills or the liquor to make him numb. So he'd settle for pain.

The sink was so white and obviously recently cleaned – had Roger actually done housework while he was out? He must be seriously out of sorts – he almost felt bad when he dug the sharp edge into his forearm and dragged it across, blood dripping rapidly down to stain the porcelain.

_I need this. I’ll clean it later. It’s fine._

He turned the tap on and lifted the blade from his skin, only to bear down again an inch from the first mark. Several older scabs tore up and away. He hardly felt it.

_More._

If pain could make him remember, it could also make him forget.


	3. A Slip of the Hand

Once in a while, Mark likes to stop and count the scars on his wrists. There's a lot of them and it goes without saying that once he commits himself to the task, it becomes an all-day project- one that requires him to hermit away in his room by himself and curl up in bed, or on the floor beside it, arm held comfortably out before him as he traces them with his fingers and murmurs the numbers under his breath. For a few hours he disappears off of the face of the Earth and returns, fine and dandy as ever, to his life to ignore the worried, suspicious glances of his roommate.

It's one of those days. Roger is out, and Mark is taking full advantage. He supposes that it's obsessive and that it should probably concern him more that something so pointless and unhealthy can consume him for entire days, huge chunks of his life, but he's too focused on the counting to care.

The filmmaker's fingers smoothed down his arm, morbidly fascinated by the raised lines, the scaly feeling of them, and the way that if he applied just the right amount of pressure he felt like he was burning. It's hard to resist picking at the scabs, watching the blood well up all over again- if he does it, though, it will only take them longer to heal. Every breath he takes is another line, his blue eyes flickering over the crisscrossing latticework of his arm.

It's not disturbing, not really. He doesn't know why everyone always thinks that it is. When it comes down to it they're lines. They're art. He'd always known he was an artist at heart, and since he was a shitty filmmaker this must be his calling. Body art, in blood instead of ink. He could live with that.

Roger would appreciate it if Roger paid him any attention at all lately. Not that he blames him. Some small, bitter part of him blames him but he's ignoring it, at least for now. At least until it all becomes overwhelming again and he ends up taking the blade to his wrist, and he has to count them all over again even though he's sure he knows the number. Mark has grown accustomed to this sickly cycle of his and he's strangely content. Not quite alive and not quite dead, either. If only he could reach that perfect state of numbness, everything would be fine...

When he gets to two hundred he stops to let that sink in, staring at the exact place he'd stopped. There's more still to go- the last time he'd counted it had been two hundred and thirty four- but it still seems like an awful lot. Hadn't he just started doing this...? He's not even counted the ones that faded, the oldest, the ones that had hurt the most.

Now it barely hurts at all.

More. He needs more and more and vaguely he recognizes it just by the depth of the most recent additions, the angry scarlet that stares back at him and refuses to fade away.

Red, he thinks, is entirely appropriate. Red is angry. Pink is romantic but red is blood, red is  _rage_  at everyone and everything and violence and war and everything Mark feels, every day beneath the mask. What he used to conceal behind the lens stays trapped in his chest now, growing larger, mutating into something grotesque and unlovable.

_Just like me..._

He shakes his head, refocusing his eyes on the last slash halfway down his arm. It glares at him, accusing and comforting at the same time and he loves the confused way his gut twists in response to the conflict as much as he hates it. His life is one big series of contradictions, hypocrisy at it's finest.

And he wonders why he hates himself.

_No. I know._

But he doesn't just hate himself. He hates everyone. He hates everything. Even Roger- especially Roger- except Roger.

Suddenly, he itches for his knife again.

Fuck. He's not even done counting. He can't start a new row until he's sure, until he's double-checked, and God there's something wrong with him and that just makes him want to open his veins even more.

His eyes light on the pilfered pocketknife that has become his best friend, lying oh-so-innocently on the nightstand just a foot from his hand. Everything about it invites him and he finds himself reaching for it before he makes a conscious decision. It doesn't matter. He knows which will win in the end, which always wins.

All of this thinking is hurting his head, bringing those awful thoughts back. Mark would much rather scar his arms than his mind.

He's barely flicked it open before he hears the front door slam and Roger curse under his breath. The noise startles him; his arms stings and he glances down, glasses slipping down his nose, to find that he's gashed his wrist and blood is bubbling from the wound at an already alarming rate. "Shit." Swallowing down the initial muted panic the sight triggers he swings his legs out of bed, clamping his opposite hand over the fresh cut so tightly his knuckles turn white. Crimson wells between his fingers, sickening, and his gag reflex decides to make an appearance so strongly that he nearly blacks out. Oh, fuck. He's done it now.

_Way to go, Cohen. I hope you fucking bleed out on the bathroom floor. Just like A-_

He puts a stop to the thought before it can even fully form, shaking his head violently to clear it and staggering for the door. Bathroom. Sink. Water. Soap. He just needs to make it to the goddamn bathroom and he'll worry about everything else later. Awkwardly, he manages to turn the knob with his elbows and toes the door open with one foot, slipping out and bee-lining for the bathroom. Roger molds himself to the wall as Mark shoves past, furrowing his eyebrows.

"Hey- what the fuck are you doing?"

"Bathroom," Mark replies shortly. He can regret it later- right now, he's rediscovered his survival instinct and it's just about choking him. Years of desperation and dark clouds and a pill bottle hidden in the back of his dresser, all but forgotten, have been wiped away by the shock of maroon that's begun seeping down to stain his rolled-up sleeve, uncontrollable. Shitshitshit. He's going to need stitches.

How is he ever going to keep this from Roger now?

Well. He's certainly fucked up this time, hasn't he?

Irrationally, he wonders if this is what he gets for cutting before counting. It's fleeting, but it's there.

His future therapist is going to have so much  _fun_  picking that one apart. Assuming he lives that long. And judging by the state of his arm, at least at the moment, he might not even see tomorrow. Roger's going to be so pissed if he really does go the same way as April. Mark decides then and there that if he dies, he'll have the decency to do it outside of the tub. Maybe he'll even try to clean up some of his mess before it all fades to black.

He's getting ahead of himself again. Stop. Think.

Right, wash it out. That first.

He pries his fingers away one at a time, as if that will make it better. The blood is flowing at the same rate either way, freely dripping down his arm in thinning lines, down to the crease of his elbow, droplets splattering the floor, the counter, into the sink. Don't panic. Don't panic... He uses his stained hand to twist the tap, icy water gushing out over his wrist. The water pinks immediately. He wants to be sick.

Close your eyes. Deep breaths, come on... He leans heavily against the counter, hardly able to remember a time that he'd been quite this high strung. Is he dizzy from blood loss or from the sight of it? Both? He sincerely hopes that Roger isn't listening outside of the door. His breathing is shallow, his pulse quick and frightened like a rabbit's. Calm is an impossibility.

Predictably, Roger knocks less than politely moments after the thought races through his mind. "Mark, what the  _hell?_ " It's funny because if he wasn't so busy freaking out over his arm he would be squirming over the note of grudging concern in Roger's voice. "Are you dying or what?"

Maybe. "I'm fine." It's a miracle that his voice doesn't shake, doesn't even jump an octave. Roger broods silently on the other side and he can imagine those green eyes boring holes into the wood, suspicious. Not  _now_ , please... "Just needed- um-"

"Yeah, whatever," Roger grumbles, clearly not in the mood for conversation. Mark hears the rustle of his jacket as he turns and stomps off down the hallway, fuming. He must not be in a good mood, then. Great. What happened this time?

Wait. Arm. Right.  _Damn_  that's a lot of blood. He really doesn't have the money for an ER visit right now, either. If he's honest, he  _never_  has the money for an ER visit. None of them do. He doesn't even have a fucking job, how is he going to pay for this?

Roger is going to kill him if he doesn't die.

Shakily, he rubs the blood from the wound under the stinging cold of the water and examines it. It's long, it's deep. It's vertical on a plane of horizontal slashes, a perpendicular fuckup of a line right along his vein. It's not something that can be fixed with a dab of Neosporin and a Winnie the Pooh band-aid from the dusty box in the medicine cabinet. Mark has never in his life wanted to punch himself in the face more.

The free clinic. It's his only option. But it could be hours until he gets in... Who even knew if he would make it down the street before collapsing? What if Roger caught him before he could even leave the loft? He's fucked, he's so fucked, he hasn't gotten laid in an immeasurable amount of time and yet he's so fucking fucked and the profanity has started to blur in his head, some kind of twisted coping mechanism. All he has to do is make it out, make it there. The clinic. It's free and it's discreet. As for Roger, who is he kidding? Roger doesn't care what he does. He's a grown man. Nevermind if he still feels like a lonely, broken teenager in a hospital bed in Scarsdale.

He'll make a run for it, he decides. The wound still dribbles down his arm and he wipes as much away as he can, grabbing at the toilet paper and unrolling an enormous wad of it to press over the gaping laceration. This is going to take a whole lot of good luck and some coordination that he doesn't have at the best of times.

"I can do this," he breathes to himself. That negative little cloud in the back of his mind snorts scornfully and he takes a deep breath, focusing on the door handle.

Here goes.

* * *

Somehow Mark drags himself back to the loft three hours later with his wrist wrapped in gauze, tired and paler than he's ever been. He's not thinking of Roger now. The fine details of the graffiti on the walls of the stairwell have blurred in his vision- blood loss, they'd warned him. Lie down. Take a cab. But Mark doesn't have money for a cab and Roger is probably wondering where he's been. Even if he's not, he doesn't mind a little walking. It's a lot less suspicious, and that's what sells him.

His wrist is throbbing. He can just keep ignoring that as well.

Fingers shaking almost violently, he twists the key in the lock and nudges the door open. There's not enough energy in his body to give it a real shove. He stumbles inside, dizzy and wanting to curl up on the floor and just cry. He's so fucking tired. Everything hurts, his arm and his head and his feet. They hadn't given him any painkillers but he'd been sorely tempted to ask.

They'd probably have thought he was a junkie if he had. That's how it is in the East Village. He's starting to rethink it himself; if everyone is doing it, and if any of them were half as miserable as him to begin with, then maybe he's just been playing stubborn all along.

Sometimes Mark is jealous of Roger's needles and April's bloody arms. His own scars itch beneath the bandaging, burning brightly. The nurse had said nothing about the state of his arms as she'd tended to the fresh wound and he's glad, so very glad that he hadn't gone to a real hospital. They would just have locked him up. Mark doesn't have the time or the patience or the state of mind for that. He'd be off his rocker on the first day.

Isn't he already crazy?

He can see into his room from here, all the way down the hallway. It seems so far away right now but he's prepared to traverse it if it means unconsciousness. Mark spends the majority of his time wishing he could crawl back into his bed and sleep these thoughts away, and today he has an excuse. As he walks, unsteady and almost drunken on his feet, he wonders if Collins could tell. If Roger could. Can anyone see through him? He feels transparent. Some people, though, they only see their reflection in the glass when they should be looking through. Mark's not worth looking through it anyways.

He's ready to collapse into bed and pass the fuck out but when he gets there Roger is lying out, presumably waiting for his return, across his squeaky mattress. The tip of the knife that Mark belatedly realizes he'd forgotten in the sheets pokes at his thumb as he toys with it and the filmmaker's blood runs cold. It doesn't matter  _what_ Roger is doing in his bed, he's there and he might as well know. There's blood on the floor, blood on the sheets. Not a lot of it. But it's there and Roger's not stupid, Roger can see when he's looking.

All he can think is that they don't have the money, not for the psych ward. He's not going back.

"Hmmm?" The guitarist sits up with a grunt as soon as he recognizes Mark's presence, setting the knife down. "Hey. Where'd you get this? I was wondering where it went. Hey- dude, what the fuck, are you alright?"

The genuine worry in his voice startles him, makes him stand a little straighter. Does he really look that awful? He hasn't been paying attention but he probably does, he's exhausted and hurting and fuck. Roger's going to figure it out if he doesn't get it together. "Fine... I- found it." He should have had a better excuse than that but he doesn't even care anymore. He just wants his bed and Roger is occupying his space, reaching for the bulkier arm.  
"Don't-"

"What did you do?" It's probably not an accusation but Mark takes it as one, narrowing his eyes.

"It's just a little cut. I'm fine," he repeats a bit more forcefully. Roger looks taken aback and then offended, withdrawing his hand. Normally, Mark would probably get that desperate sinking feeling that he gets whenever he's disappointed one of his friends- now, though, he stands his ground, trembling. "Why are you in my room?"

"You ran out of here like there was a fire." The rocker is definitely irritated with him now. Despite everything it still makes Mark cringe inside, and he promises himself that he'll make up for it in blood later. "There was blood all over the bathroom- are you going to tell me what happened or do I have to force you?"

There was a time when Mark would have been legitimately afraid of that poorly veiled threat. He glares, feeling uncharacteristically hostile. Maybe it's just because he's so sick of feeling this way and Roger is the only person around that he can take it out on. Or maybe he's just an asshole. The second one seems more likely, and more appealing.

"I said I'm fine. Go away." He swallows down another wave of nausea at the thought of Roger piecing it together. Stupid, stupid, he'd left behind so much evidence... "I'm just- I'm tired." His conviction is dwindling and he can feel the return of the needy, clingy part of him that always rears its head when Roger is around. The words blurt from his mouth uncontrollably, pathetic. "How was your day?"

Roger looks at him like he wants to punch him. For some unknown reason he doesn't and Mark is overwhelmingly grateful for that. "Brian up and fucking quit, and now we don't have a drummer. Our gig is this Friday. I don't have time to go look for a new one." He closes his eyes and sighs, heaving himself off of Mark's bed with an aura of repressed rage darkly surrounding him, making Mark shrink away as he brushes past to let him to his bed. The knife is slipped into his pocket- the filmmaker wants to protest before he realizes that it's  _Roger's knife_  in the first place and he can't afford any more slip ups today. He clamps his mouth shut, just watching him trudge away, brooding in that petulant, attractive way of his. "Fine, take a fucking nap. And then wash the damn sink out. With bleach."

With that, the door slams shut behind him. Mark sways on the spot, nearly overcome with helpless emotion and an ache in his chest that's only growing deeper. Roger is normally snarky but this is a new level. He supposes that it's just frustration, understandable if unpleasant, but at the moment Mark is taking everything very personally and it hurts just to think about that loathing expression on his friend's face.

He never did finish counting...

Licking his dry lips, Mark sits heavily on the bed and stares at the door, tears welling miserably in his eyes now that he's alone. It's never going to end.

Why do people say that things will get better if they only get worse?


	4. Under the Mattress

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So… it's been a while, huh? I know a lot of people still want to read this story even though it had barely gotten started when I basically abandoned it. I still get messages begging me to finish it.
> 
> Well, fear not – I never intended to leave this fic unfinished. Let's be honest, I'm probably not going to be able to update REGULARLY, but I promise I'm going to try. Mental illness and adulthood are making this harder than it should be, but I still have a passion for this story, and it's all planned out. So here you go, and here's to starting fresh, huh?

Mark hates himself more than he hates the guy who just made off with his wallet.

He's absolutely useless. They don't need him. Nobody needs him. He doesn't need him. He's so whiny and clingy and overemotional even when he tries so fucking hard not to be. It's not fair- and there he goes, whining again. Why can't it all just be over? It hurts enough. His arms throb. His head throbs. Everything is hot and then it's cold.

Vaguely, he hopes that they'll bury him in this sweater. He likes this sweater. It's warm…

His fingers twitch and his eyes, despite his best efforts, won't open.

Oh well, then.

He was bound to do the job himself soon enough anyways…

* * *

 

"Mark? Mark!"

Roger? That's… that's definitely Roger's voice, but that doesn't make sense. Mark furrows his eyebrows and gives a choked gasp at the pounding he discovers between his eyes, hands coming heavily, clumsily up as if to bat it away.

He's dimly aware that he's curled himself right back into the fetal position, and that that's probably pathetic. He does not care.

This is really not the time for Roger to be having one of his panic attacks. Mark is barely managing this consciousness thing.

There's one question nagging at him before he can complain about that, though:

How the  _hell_  did he get here? And why does it feel like he's been run over by some asshole's minivan full of squealing, screeching children?

Well. The screeching actually might be coming from inside his head.

That's okay. That's normal. His new normal.

Yeah.

He takes a breath and tries, despite the throbbing pressure on the walls of his skull, to concentrate.

_Concentrate, Cohen, you worthless piece of shit._

It comes back with painful slowness, and he almost wishes that it hadn't. Great, now he's  _wishing_  for amnesia – wonderful, fantastic, another dip in his sanity! Can he sink any lower into his own deranged brain? He's starting to wonder if maybe he were destined to be a grinning, empty shell of a person, and God it sounds so nice not to think or remember –

"Collins? Tom, what happened, what's wrong with him, is he okay -?" Roger's voice cracks and jumps and octave and Mark snorts and then groans when the sound reverberates back to his brain like a vengeful ice pick, clutching his head uselessly, trying to roll over and plant his face into the – couch?

Is this – oh. Oh. They must be in the loft. He smells duct tape. This is the couch, then, and Collins is somewhere to his left, and Roger is apparently hovering over him because he can smell his cheap cologne and there's a calloused hand pressing insistently to his forehead.

His voice gets closer. More importantly, it gets louder. Mark wonders if it would be appropriate to shove his only remaining roommate out an open window.

Lord. It's the first time in, what,  _years_  that he's been more inclined to harm someone else than himself? Stop the fucking presses.

Honestly, though, he's hurting too much right now to even consider bringing a blade to his skin.

What d'you know! All he really needed was a good hard afternoon  _mugging_  to kick that nasty habit of his!

(Discreetly, he shifts to be sure he can still feel the cheap pocketknife he'd picked up today in his wanderings. It's there, to his vast relief – the pounding in his head stops for all of three seconds with the force of it, and he's uncomfortably reminded of the insatiable pull, the growing agitation of the whispers encroaching on him even in the daylight, the  _more_ and the  _hate, useless, worthless, talentless, waste of breath._

It's there, a hard line in his pocket, a steel line of resolve.

Fuck, he's getting all poetic about his pain again. What a tortured soul, that Mark Cohen is. Such a  _martyr_.

His autobiography is incomplete on bloodstained pages stuffed hurriedly, inelegantly beneath his mattress. He winces. Hopefully no one will ever have to read that angsty piece of garbage – not if he has any say, anyways.

He makes a mental note to hide it before he commits the final deed.

But he could have died  _today_.

The thought snaps him back into reality very quickly. (Very painfully, too.) Collins is speaking. His voice is lower, deeper, richer, easier to focus on than Roger's gravelly chain-smoker siren wail. Mark struggles to open his eyes. He regrets it.

"- in an alley, just passed out on the ground -" he's saying, imploring, and if he could just focus his eyes he'd be able to tell whether or not he's  _actually_ shaking Roger by the shoulders right now. _Does he have a death wish?_ Roger has a tendency to strike out when he's liked this, shouldn't be touched, everyone knows that –

His glasses must be cracked or missing. He can't feel them perched on his nose, so he's pretty sure it's the latter, but he can't actually feel much on or around his face right now… Someone did a really good job of smacking his head into the pavement.

"I'm taking him to the clinic," Collins finishes, and  _that_ makes his stomach lurch. God, not the clinic, not again, he was just there…

Roger doesn't seem to recognize the panic that's probably dancing in his eyes, though, nodding and shaking and are those tears? Fuck, Mark wishes that he could see. Or at least focus.

When was the last time someone cried over  _him_ , and not the other way around?

"Yeah. Yeah." Roger mutters, wiping his sleeve over his face, eyes fixed on the ground. He glances sideways at Mark with what might be an uneasy expression. He can't really tell.  _Damn it!_ The one time he  _wants_ to look Roger in the eye, he has to be too fucking out of it to lift his head all the way.

Speaking of which – he lifts his head. The pain explodes behind his eyes, excruciating, and he swears. Loudly. Two other voices join in, like some twisted, uncoordinated chorus of profanity.

Mark tries not to wonder why his brain is wording things this way right now. He's always had an unfortunate affinity for flowery language. Right now, he's afraid to open his mouth, unsure of what might come out. Probably more  _fucks_ than anything, but there's the off chance that he might also come out with something straight out of a Shakespearean tragedy, and he'd rather Roger didn't find out about his stitches and his medication and his ' _I hope I die'_ s in the form of a slurred impromptu piece of slam poetry that he won't even remember in the morning.

And oh, fuck, the world is spinning again. Collins pulls him upright with one arm solid and warm around his shoulders, supporting him, keeping him close to his body. Mark's head lolls onto his shoulder, head and heart pounding.

He thinks he hears himself groan again. Roger is rummaging anxiously for something – he comes back bearing a cup of water, shoving it into Mark's trembling hands, and Mark doesn't even bother to ask if it's clean, just grasps it weakly and sips.

It tastes like pennies. It's oddly comforting.

"You feelin' okay, there, buddy?" Collins asks not unkindly, and Mark spares a moment for a flash of intense gratitude for his presence. He doubts he'd even want to be conscious if it were just him and Roger in this situation.

Fuck, he doesn't even want to imagine what it might have been like, Roger finding him. Howling. Angry stomping, panicked phone calls, a full body check-up right there in the goddamn dirty alley –

Nope, nope, he's not going to think about it right now. He's not going to think of it at  _all_.

His arms are throbbing dully beneath his shirtsleeves, cheerful, as if reminding him of their existence. Shit. His stitches…

Well, he can't check them now. He'll have to wait until those two pairs of eyes aren't so keen on his face. Can he really blame them, though? He's probably a fucking sight.

Gingerly, and slightly afraid of what he might find, he lifts his hand and touches his temple where the most pain seems to have accumulated. There's blood matted into his hair on that side of his head, but he can't find the source of it before his fingers start shaking so hard that he has to set the cup down, swaying where he stands.

Reluctantly, he lowers his hand, struggling to wrap his tongue around the words he wants to say. Despite everything, the world is starting to look almost normal again – not too bright, almost in focus. Almost.

"M'fine," he manages, plastering on a weak smile. Neither of them look impressed.

_Damn it, I'm off my game._

Unsurprising, but inconvenient nonetheless. He tries again. "Seriously. Just – look, just give me some Advil or something, I'll lie down and be fine in no time. You know me…"

No. No they don't.

But they don't know that.

He doesn't even ask about his glasses. He'll just have to get the spare pair from his nightstand. He's lived here long enough that he knows it's a lost cause, trying to retrieve them.

Just like they all know that it's a lost cause, filing a report. The guy who did it is probably long gone.

Mark wrinkles his nose and wracks his brain belatedly for an image of his assailant, but he's got nothing. Ah, well. Better not to remember than to have Roger, skinny washed-up wannabe rock star Roger, go trying to hunt the guy down and end up getting his ass handed to him, which is exactly what he did the last time something like this happened.

"I don't think so." Collins sure sounds sure of himself.  _Good for him._ Mark tries to shake the antagonistic thought out of his brain, but it just jostles around in the clutter there, dark and ugly like the rest of it. "C'mon, pumpkinhead, we've gotta get you to the clinic. Can't let you go to sleep until we're sure you don't have a concussion."

In that moment, he hates Collins. He hates him so much he can't breathe.

And just beneath that, there's a thrill of icy terror.

_They're going to find out._

The panic gives him clarity, if nothing else, and even if only for a moment. He lifts his head and looks directly into Collins' eyes, avoiding acknowledging Roger's existence altogether. He'll deal with  _that_ headache later. "I can go by myself. Look, I'm fine."

He pulls away from Collins' reluctantly loosening grip, taking a tiny step away. Sweat beads cold on his forehead. Mark hopes that he doesn't look entirely like he's about to pitch forward and perish right there on the living room floor, because that's what he feels like doing.

Hysterical laughter bubbles in his throat. The living room floor is at least marginally better than the tub, right? Right?

He suppresses it, barely, because Collins is already looking at him like he's a cornered animal. The older man reaches out for him slowly, hands up as if in surrender. There's a terrible understanding in the crows' feet Mark can somehow see gathered around the corners of his eyes, one that he can hardly bear to contemplate, because even if it's not real it still hurts to think anyone might know how he feels – how weak he is, how much he wishes that this could have just been it, a good excuse to die early and not have to push himself through another day of counting and shaking and bleeding and hiding…

"Mark," he says carefully, grasping his shoulder with that huge palm, warm and comforting. "You're probably kind of shaken right now, but you don't look so good man…" Mark can't help leaning into the touch, and he hates himself for that, too.

_Pathetic. You're pathetic._

Drily, he thanks his subconscious for the reminder. It gives him the two fingered salute, grim as ever. Doesn't even spare him a Cheshire cat smile like it does those rare nights that he tries to resist the gruesome siren song of metal tearing flesh.

That makes him feel even worse, somehow. Abandoned.

"I'm really fine," he laughs, or tries to. His voice wobbles dangerously in the middle, warping, as if confused about what it's supposed to be doing. He winces as Collins' concerned expression hardens into one of determination. A hand clamps around his bicep, and he knows already that he's not getting out of this one.

"Roger doesn't need to come," he blurts before he can stop himself, and doesn't dare look back at Roger's expression. Collins' looks taken aback enough for the both of them, but he nods after a moment, smiling tightly.

"What the fuck is that supposed to mean? Of course I'm coming –!"

"Right," Collins agrees easily, and ignores Roger altogether. Dimly, Mark does recognize that tone of voice – it's the same low, soothing quality he'd always adopted and layered over his words when Roger was going through his hellish withdrawal. He's briefly overcome with shame that they think he's sunk that low.  _I'm not comparable to a drug addict. Am I? No._

The blade in his pocket stays tight against his leg, coaxing and whispering wordlessly at him, an urge without a name.  _Addict. Junkie._

Adrenaline junkie.  _Pain_  junkie.

He blinks and feels abruptly sick.

It  _might_  be the concussion he's belatedly, guiltily realizing that he probably does have.

"Yeah," he hears himself say, but this time no one looks at him like he's grown a third head. Collins ushers him out the door and down each step, talking him through it, and Mark doesn't register a word. He can still feel the strength of Roger's wounded, angry gaze on his back, which is scraped and bleeding as it is.

 _Fuck_. He grimaces as he wobbles down the last two steps, clinging to his friend's shoulder tightly to avoid faceplanting onto the sidewalk. Collins doesn't say anything, just winces sympathetically.

He's going to have to figure out how to get out of taking off his shirt.

In the distance, he hears sirens, and feels a bitter wash of jealousy overcome him for a moment.

If Collins had waited just a little longer to find him… That could be him. He could be dead. It could all be  _over_ , and he wouldn't have to be around when they saw his fucked up mural of scars, his last and greatest pet project. Better than his screenplays. Better than Roger's shitty song. Better than the film.

But no. It looks like he's  _still_  going to have to do it himself.

* * *

In hindsight, the whole morning feels like a sloppy, hungover smear of paint. A warped film reel. Useless, but endlessly replaying, jumping and jerking in an attempt at recreation. A really lackluster attempt.

It's probably not  _worth_  remembering.

Of course, that's probably exactly why he'll never forget it.

Objectively, it should have been a relatively decent morning, even for Mark. Even someone who's only consolation comes in the sight of his own blood could stop and appreciate the sunrise, especially on such an unseasonably warm day. For once, Mark didn't immediately want to go back inside when he saw the first streak of dazzling orange light the sky.

Today, he was going to be fucking useful. He was going to do something adult. Something good. He was going to make himself be human, for once. He could feel the determination pressing with weak determination against his veins; infrequently exercised as it was, he couldn't really blame it for being so pathetic.

Nevertheless, he had already forced himself out of the apartment. It was seven in the morning, and he had an honest-to-God interview, for an honest-to-God  _job._

Mark can hardly even remember the last time he'd had a job that lasted him more than three weeks, but hell, any number of paychecks is better than none, right?

So he had dredged up the last of his false smile and let it ring through the phone lines – hating himself for basking in Roger's curious glances as he paced about the loft with the phone cord tangling around his ankles – until finally, finally, he'd wrangled an interview. A promising one, even, according to Roger, who had later admitted (without remorse) to listening through the line from the other room.

That spark of determination had died almost immediately and left him practically catatonic with nothing but a couple of stray tacks and one particularly twisty notebook wire for company. His journal is looking more ragged by the day, and this isn't helping, but when it comes down to it he cares more about wrecking himself for the sake of his sanity than he does about his own cynical, feverish ramblings.

Roger regularly barges in to ask him how his day has been, and Mark regularly lifts his head to mumble some bullshit about going out with his camera and filming the damn pigeons again.

But somehow he's dragged himself out of bed for this. Somehow, he's found it in him to care about something – even if it was only the idea of possibly being able to afford an air conditioner for the impending New York summer.

The interview isn't until eleven. He knows this. He can't stand to sit around and wait for it, though, every moment another stroke of doubt.

If he lets himself be alone, he'll never go to this interview.

If he lets himself be alone he'll end up in the bathroom again, anxiously counting his scars, hating himself in waves.

If he lets himself be alone then he's just going to end up writing more  _shitty poetry_  and honestly, he's doing himself – and everyone else, probably – a favor by getting out of the fucking apartment for a couple of hours and contributing to the wheezing economy.

He stows the notebook under his mattress, along with his bedraggled collection of tarnished thumbtacks, and plucks his underfed wallet from the dresser – and he takes to the street.

One stop at a sketchy gas station later, he's passing an alley, stuffing his new pocketknife down his jeans with that morbid, childish exhilaration that had accompanied his original theft of Roger's knife, and suddenly his knees are hitting the pavement.

His head follows shortly afterward. He's pretty sure skulls aren't supposed to  _bounce._

The man doesn't speak, all business, and when he's finished sniffing out every cent Mark's got on him, all that's left is the cheap gas-station knife that he hadn't even thought to use. He groans and lies there, staring at the orange streak in the sky, hardly aware of anything but his mother's voice inexplicably ringing in his ears.

_"_ _Self-defense classes, Marky! Your father and I agree, we've already paid!"_

He almost laughs, he really does. His stomach is rolling.

His first instinct, when presented with a sharp weapon, is to drag it delicately over his own wrist. He hadn't even considered trying to fight back with it – to soil it, clumsily stabbing, to color it with blood that wasn't his.

What  _would_  his mother say?

* * *

He wonders when he decided that he was going to kill himself all the way to the clinic. It's more blocks than he wants to think about, but Collins doesn't seem to mind the walk. He talks and talks, that same soothing tone, and it goes in one ear and out the other. But he can't really be offended, Mark thinks, because he knows what it's like to be in this situation, knows what it's like to feel like his brain is rattling around in his skull whenever he focuses his eyes on something.

By the time they make it through the front doors Collins is half-carrying him, and he registers in the back of his mind that there had been mention of a cab on the way back home. He nearly groans out loud in sheer relief.  _No more walking_. Miracles  _do_  happen!

Maybe when his head doesn't feel disconnected from his body he'll be able to remember why he doesn't want to go home. Right now, though, his bed sounds perfectly warm and inviting – he'd washed his sheets less than a week ago, and the scent of those cheap dryer sheets is still lingering, and – well, on second thought, that's probably just going to give him a headache.

Well… _It can't give me what I've already got, can it?_

Sometimes – and this is a stray thought, but Mark can't stop himself from thinking it – sometimes, he remembers just how bad he feels all the time. How terrible it is to exist. How much baggage he actually has, invisible, weighing him down, dragging him under the constant relentless current of frowning faces and red lines.

He's so fucked if Collins sees his arms.

Mark is so preoccupied with his own dismaying re-realizations that he hardly even notices their ascension to the top of the queue until he hears his own name called and feels Collins' hand around his bicep again, steadying him as he stumbles back into the tiny, cramped room he remembers from the week before.

Same room. What a coincidence.

It passes in a blur. Later, Mark will recall very little of this experience, except for the end.

If only he could forget that little slip-up.

They'd been so close. He'd been bandaged, he'd been cleared, he'd even managed a dazed smile, and then, on the way out:

"Oh, Mr. Cohen, I almost forgot to ask – how are your stitches healing up?"

Logically, it doesn't make sense to freeze up at such an innocent question. The man is staring at him over the wire rims of his glasses, appearing genuinely concerned, but all Mark can feel is the prickle of Collin's gaze suddenly sharp and suspicious on his face.

"Er… they're fine. Thanks."

He smiles awkwardly and backs out of the room, licking his lips. Collins reaches out and catches him before he trips – and before he can make a break for it.

_Can't keep your secrets under the mattress forever, can you?_

"Stitches."

It's a statement, not a question. Collins' eyes are dark and narrowed, and he's reminded of their stinted lunch almost two weeks ago, the way he'd barely scraped past the professor's razor-sharp observation without questioning.

He's not going to be so lucky this time.

_Why couldn't you have just let me curl up and die on the sidewalk?_

"Alright, come on. Spill, Cohen."

 _That's_  not a question, either.

_Shit._


	5. Story of My Life

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woah, look, another update! That’s like, two in the same year, that’s fucking amazing for me yeah? Love you guys who are reading. Every review restores a dead part of my soul. I really hope other people are enjoying this, because I’m sure as hell enjoying picking it back up after so long. I’ll be editing and maybe revising the previous chapters soon, just so ya’ll know, but it shouldn’t be too much of a dramatic change.

Several mornings later, Mark returns from an ill-advised and not entirely willing rendezvous with Maureen at the Life Café with a splitting headache and half a mind to just keep walking, past the hall, onto the fire escape, trip over the railing – until there’s nothing between him and the sidewalk eight stories below but the empty air whistling in his ears.

He may or may not have spent a significant portion of the breakfast fantasizing about it.

It wasn’t so much that he didn’t want to spend time with Maureen as it was that she couldn’t shut up for five minutes, and somehow she still managed to eat her entire order and lick the fork clean in record time.

Which, of course, made it even more glaringly obvious that Mark had been pushing his French toast around his plate for half an hour without actually putting any of it in his mouth.

(It’s soggy and cold and even Maureen can’t justify picking up a fork and shoving a bite of it into Mark’s mouth herself, as she might have done two years ago.

That doesn’t stop her from nagging him about it, though.)

“Mark, eat up! You’ve got to regain your strength, don’t you?”

Miraculously, she finally stops waxing poetic about her newest dream role in some show Mark is almost completely certain that she wasn’t qualified to be in anyway. “What did we talk about? This. This exactly, Mark, you know better, you have to stop putting Roger first and take care of yourself sometimes –”

God, it doesn’t even seem like Collins had _told_ her about the stitches. There’s a seed of burning gratitude in his chest somewhere, just for that.

Less miraculously, the topic of conversation is now centered entirely around Mark’s skinny frame and peckish eating habits, and he can’t help but notice – possibly because he’s paranoid, there, he can admit it – there’s just _too much space_ between his bony wrist and the flimsy fabric of his shirtsleeve.

Smiling woodenly, he’d spit some excuse about having eaten with Roger and then gone running for the door. She hadn’t had the forethought, like Collins, to reach out and grab him before he could trickle in with the morning traffic.

Later, maybe he’ll feel bad that he made her pay for food that he couldn’t even bear the thought of trying to digest.

There’s something seriously wrong with him, he thinks. But then, he can’t really remember a time when there hadn’t been.

Mark was perfectly convinced that he’d been born defective. He has more than enough evidence, all trapped up in his violent whirlwind of a mind.

He consoles himself with the memory that he hadn’t suggested the catch-up date in the first place. That was all Collins.

* * *

 

 _Collins_ had been brutal enough to deal with, and he hadn’t given Mark nearly enough of a buffer period before he was dragging him forcibly out of the loft with that tight no-nonsense university professor smile of his that he seems, unfairly, to be able to turn on and off at will.

_“Spill, Cohen.”_

He’s going to remember that moment – that demand – for years to come. It will haunt his fretful sleep, fill up his journal, inescapable and terrifying.

Recently, with his visits so few and far between, it’s been easy to forget how scarily perceptive  Collins was. Easy to pretend that he was fine, because if Collins couldn’t see through him, maybe he wasn’t even lying? Maybe he was fine.

It makes Mark feel like he’s eighteen and spewing half-thought excuses at his professors in a panic, midterms just around the corner, his mother always looming in the back of his mind – sweetly reminding him that he only had six months left to find himself a job or pull his grades up, or he was _cut off_.

Even more uncomfortably, it reminds him that he’s lying. He’s lying to _Collins_ , and aside from the fact that he’s already busted, he feels like a _greaseball_ for doing it in the first place.

Of all his friends nowadays, Mark thinks that Collins might be the only one who hadn’t any ulterior motive or guilt driving his desire to be anywhere near him. That in itself was just a fucking miracle, not that Collins seems to realize that.

Who wants to be around little Marky Cohen when he can barely stand to be himself?

The interrogation lasts a terse forty five minutes. Tom – because this is Tom, his old pos professor, not Collins, his longtime pot supplier and on-and-off roommate – takes his words and turns them back on him, and Mark just parries desperately, face like stone, on the verge of some terrifying metaphorical abyss that he’s afraid to even look into.

The very idea of speaking any of these words in his head out loud makes him sick to his stomach.

He wonders if they’d make Tom sick, too.

Every tiny hair on his body stands up on end, prickling sharply so that he has to swallow around the pain and smile so tightly he probably looks like he’s about to snap. He tells himself not to scratch. Every single one of his scars and scabs feels like it’s on fire. (Two hundred and eighty four, last count.)

In his mind they’re a mass of tiny beacons, giving him away. He’s used to thinking of himself like that – like a bomb, like a catastrophe.

Tom is giving him that unnervingly patient, expectant look and he almost doesn’t realize why.

 _Stitches_.

Right. He has to explain the stitches.

“I slipped,” he says, almost without hearing himself. His heart is pounding so hard that he can feel it like a jackhammer to his temple. “With – with a razor.”

He doesn’t have any facial hair to speak of, except for a few pitiful, pale blond hairs that occasionally appeared on his upper lip if you looked closely enough.

“Roger was there. He’ll tell you,” he adds desperately, recklessly. Silently, he prays that Collins _never_ , ever asks Roger about this, but he has a bad feeling about it all the same.

The foreboding knot in his gut isn’t helped by Collins’ narrowed eyes, which stray to his sleeves far too often to be comfortable. He pulls them nervously down over his hands and plays with them endlessly,

_Don’t think about it. He’s trying to unnerve you. Trying to get you to spill._

The excuses themselves are poor, too. He’s just too tired, too disoriented, to come up with anything better.

_And maybe you’re tired of hiding it all the time, too._

But that’s pathetic, too, because what does he really have to complain about? Nothing. Nothing in comparison to Roger with his two dead girlfriends and his track marks and his grim life expectancy; nothing compared to Collins, practically widowed and dying and voluntarily spending his day cleaning up his favorite scrawny fuck-ups mess.

“And he didn’t come with you, I assume.” Deadpan. Collins eyes him flatly, calculating. Mark can hear the words he doesn’t say just as loudly as he can hear his traitorous heartbeat under his skin, shaking the tatters of his veins as it travels through his body. _He doesn’t know, then. About this. About_ you.

_“Spill, Cohen.”_

But – he’s not ready. Fuck, he might _never_ be ready.

Right now it feels like his life is just an endless stretch of this. Nothing more. Possibly less. What’s the point of telling people that he feels like shit when they only care so long as they get to keep him a little longer? What if he doesn’t want to be alive? What if he doesn’t want to quit?

What if he doesn’t _want_ to quit?

The thought hits him like a punch to the gut and he really does think he’ll be sick this time, throat convulsing, hand sluggishly coming to press at his stomach. As if, by sheer force of will, he can contain what’s sure to be the black bile of his own self-loathing come from the empty space inside him just to remind him that he’ll never be rid of it. Give it up? The blades, the sound of tearing, the hardened razor-thin lines like body art all up and down his arms, the bloodstained bandages and used up rolls of medical tape and –

He can’t. He can’t just stop. Not now. Not until – fuck, he doesn’t _know_. What is he waiting for? Death? That’s the only thing he can think of.

They can’t make him quit. He’s not like Roger. He’s not some addict lying passed out on their stoop with the needle still in his arm – sometimes he has to fight the urge to steal the dirty needle out from under the guy, but that’s not the point!

They can’t make him.

_But Collins would._

His mouth suddenly feels dry and cavernous.

What would he count, to calm himself down? What would he do, when Roger was pissed at him, when life inevitably disappointed him again? Just drown in it?

_Might as well._

Mark disappoints himself every day. He doubts that any serious attempt to prove differently would last more than two hours.

All he wants is to be able to make it to a single goddamn interview without fucking something up. All he wants is to feel _productive_. Like he’s contributing. Like he has a right to complain again, if only because he’d have to work like everyone else.

Now he doesn’t even have a fucking _interview_. What is there to hope for?

Collins talks a lot more than that, but his head is spinning and throbbing and his own nasty inner monologue drowns him out. All he can see is the sidewalk, damp and worn down and broken all over, the weeds trying futilely to grow out of the cracks.

Roger is nowhere to be found when he’s finally allowed to stumble into bed. Mark draws a shaky breath, the kind that rattles all of his bones, the kind he reserves for Big Number Days, and curls into himself. For hours, all he can do is massage the hard, slim bulge of his new pocketknife resting against his thigh. He doesn’t even think of writing in his journal.

The loft is still, silent, empty.

Mark is so glad that he could cry. This, he thinks, would be an acceptable thing to cry over.

He could be a drama queen, sure, but never let it be said that Roger Davis can’t take a hint.

* * *

 

He hasn’t seen Roger in almost a week now.

And it’s not that Roger has disappeared – Mark knows that he’s been home to sleep, during the afternoons and late at night, if only because he’s timidly started poking his head into his room to make sure that he’s really there, really alive.

It’s that Roger is _avoiding_ him.

Mark is pretty sure that this is a first. He also sort of wonders what Roger must be doing with his time, if he’s being so fucking quiet.

He tries not to feel stung when the first thing that comes to mind is a girl.

_He said that he wasn’t interested in dating right now. After Mimi._

For once, the voice almost sounds pitying rather than antagonistic. Maybe it’s going soft.

So he hasn’t seen Roger in days, or rather, hasn’t crossed paths with him. And he still doesn’t have a job, or bus fare, or friends that he feels comfortable within a mile radius of right now. There’s nothing to do. Nothing but staring at the ceiling, avoiding mirrors, rubbing his battered head, and pretending that taking roughly two showers a week is perfectly hygienic.

Mark can think of about a thousand things he’s done wrong in the past two weeks, so he’s struggling a little to narrow it down. Knowing Roger, he’s probably still offended that Mark had refused to let him come to the clinic. Offended. Angry. Not _concerned_ , because Mark just can’t wrap his head around the idea of being worried over like an actual human being.

So instead of thinking about it anymore, he reaches frantically underneath the mattress and grabs for his knife, presses it to the slivers of bare, unmarred skin he has left on his forearms, staring desperately at the blood bubbling up as if it will turn back time.

It doesn’t work, but his heart stops pounding so hard it hurts his ribs every time he hears the clomp of Roger’s boots.

When even the blood can’t keep his mind occupied, he turns to his journal.

Then to his screenplay.

It’s terrible. He can’t even pretend otherwise. He doesn’t really have the motivation to, either.  The plot has been reworked a hundred fucking times, and he still doesn’t have any idea where it’s going to end up.

On top of that, all of the characters are excruciatingly, embarrassingly familiar.

There is nothing wrong with self-parody in fiction.  Absolutely nothing wrong with it.

Mark tells himself that until he’s blue in the face – and honestly, with all the blood loss, it’s not implausible – but it doesn’t make him feel any less pathetic as he picks idly at the scabs just beneath his sleeve and chews on the end of his pen, a habit he used to think was disgusting before he’d met Roger.

Or, more accurately, until Roger had ruined him for normal, productive, miserable nine-to-five civilian life.

* * *

 

He can still remember green eyes behind the smoke curling between them, the shape of his lips twisting up into that slow grin.

He can still remember the feeling of pitching forward and plunging into love.

He’d never clawed his way back out of the hole he hadn’t even known he was digging for himself. He hadn’t known he had those kinds of pits in him, endless, bottomless, gaping maws on the landscape of his pathetic personality.

It’s not _really_ fair to give Roger all of the credit for his – his fall from capitalistic ideals, for lack of a better term. (Honestly, why does he write? He’s horrible at this, even in recollection.) Collins had played a bigger role, overall, in the physical manifestations of that – inviting him to live in the loft with him, introducing him to drugs he never would have dared touch when he was a cute little senior at Scarsdale High.

But Roger had been beautiful, and dangerous, and God help him, Mark couldn’t concentrate on his half-hearted business aspirations and this ridiculous crush at the same time.

Roger demanded his – well, everyone’s – _full_ attention. In his glory days, sweaty and eyes gleaming up on the stage and under the neon lights, Roger had been practically manic, spilling energy with every movement, grabbing hands and arms and wrists, faces and shoulders, dragging people along with him at a breakneck, breathless pace, and life next to him was a little like an endless thrill of adrenaline.

 _Or serotonin_ , his brain supplies nastily.

Mark scowls. Hard.

Oh, yeah. He’d been in love with that Roger Davis, on the stage, on the posters.

That devilish grin, those green eyes like some seductive personal demon, destined to drag him straight into hell the way his mother had shrilly warned him as he’d walked out the door for the first time.

He’d been in love with the Roger on the fire escape, too, the Roger with his arm slung around his shoulders.

He’d been so damn _smitten_ already that he hadn’t even thought to worry about the natural progression of things – the emotional peril he was putting himself in.

Because Roger, he wasn’t spectacularly attractive on his own. His cheekbones, his chin, had an odd contour to them that Mark suspected would make him particularly hard to draw, if he had been that type of artist. His hair was awfully shaggy at times, bleached so many times that the ends were brittle. He had scars and drunken, poorly thought out tattoos littering his body carelessly, as if to say _what do you want, I’m young, I’m allowed._

It wasn’t his face that made people love him. It wasn’t just the shade of green his eyes were, if you peered closely enough – which Mark _totally_ hadn’t, but was (of course) utterly, sickeningly enamored with anyways.

Roger was restless. Roger was enthusiastic. Roger was reckless, and he was _alive_.

Roger also had quite a spectacular collection of track marks.

* * *

 

At the time it hadn’t seemed all that important. Most things, actually, hadn’t seemed that important once Mark knew, officially, that he wasn’t welcome back in his father’s house, and that no, his mother hadn’t been bluffing, and his Chemical Bank card was useless.

But that was all in the past.

He shakes his head again, as if he could shake the intrusive – and, frankly, fucking annoying – thoughts right out through his ear and onto his notebook page.

The page, which might as well have been blank, stared up at him accusingly.

He set the pen against it and chewed his lip and counted backwards from 10, still picking slowly at his own scabs, the bruise on the side of his face throbbing gently.

He can do this. Definitely. Totally.

He’s an _artist,_ damn it! He wouldn’t let anything take that from him. Not even his own defective piece of shit brain.

_‘He’d come to New York with hopeless, frazzled dreams of freedom. He had never emerged.’_

He pauses and then sits up, looking down uncertainly at the page, before jotting the sentence down with the appropriate measure of chagrin.

The ink clots at the end of the last ‘d’ and glistens at him, reproachfully, _disgustedly_ –

_Calm down, Cohen, for fuck’s sake._

He doesn’t write that one down, although he thinks he probably should. A thousand times, in a notebook and on the walls and on his face and over his mouth, so that he’ll stop stupidly, anxiously babbling every time he opens it.

The protagonist’s name isn’t Mark, but it’s close enough. Michael. Just as generic, but with more syllables. He wasn’t Jewish, but that wouldn’t throw anyone off. Most people couldn’t tell by looking at Mark that he was Jewish, anyways, and he hadn’t practiced in years. Michael hadn’t started out as a self-insert, or at least, Mark hadn’t intended him to be, but that had been twenty balled-up pages ago, and now he might as well admit that he doesn’t want to write about Michael.

He wants to write about him. That, in itself, makes him want to sigh until he runs out of air and suffocates on his own paradox.

He hates himself, he hates the bandages, he hates the blades, and yet there they are spinning around and around and around in his mind.

There’s no one to tell, and even his journal has to be sick of him by now.

Mark covers his ears, but the voice is still there – sometimes his and sometimes Roger’s and sometimes Maureen’s and sometimes the unearthly metallic whisper of the tools he uses to unravel himself, one meticulous _tear_ at a time.

 _You’re worthless,_ it hisses gleefully, distorted and sinking deep into the base of his skull. _You’re not a_ real _artist, like the rest of them._

He frowns and tries to shake the thought from his head, as though that had ever really worked. _You’ll never finish another film. You can’t even finish a journal entry right._

Part of him wants to tell it to shut up; the other part is chanting miserably along with it.

_Everyone else is moving on. And what are you doing, huh, Cohen?_

He still hasn’t gotten his wallet back. None of them have very much faith in the police.

_Sitting around feeling sorry for yourself and pretending that you have a single creative cell floating around in that diseased brain of yours?_

He’s going to have to get a new ID. Another fifty bucks down the fucking drain.

_They could do without the extra baggage, don’t you think?_

He has no hope of replacing it anytime soon, seeing as he’d missed the fucking interview.

_Useless. Worthless. Burden._

He doesn’t realize that his breathing has escalated until his bruised temple is throbbing again.

With a groan of real despair, Mark slumps over his lap and buries his face in his hands. The wire rims dig into his skin and he relishes it, because it’s easier to feel the sting this way than it is to go digging underneath his mattress, dizzy and so pathetically weak, like Roger so many months ago when he went reaching for those endless hidden stashes that Mark always thought he’d gotten rid of, but never actually managed.

Come to think of it, he’s had worse injuries at Roger’s hand.

He pushes his knuckle into the bruise until his teeth hurt and then draws his arms up so that he can lie on them, unable to muster the energy to pull out the covers so that he can climb beneath them.

The nice thing about being exhausted all the time, he thinks blearily just before he falls, is that he doesn’t toss and turn anymore.

Fade to black just isn’t quick enough for him anymore.

* * *

 

When he wakes up, the window is dark. That in itself isn’t alarming.

Someone has turned on the light.

He nearly breaks his neck sitting up, eyes stretched wide with panic, feeling for his knife – to hide or to stab the intruder, he doesn’t know. Instead, he finds his pen, and then Roger’s thigh.

“Morning.” Roger glances up at him with half a smile, as though Mark isn’t trembling and drawing his hand back like he’s been slapped. He looks about a hundred times less tense than he’d been the last time Mark had seen him – the angry crease between his eyebrows has eased, and his hair looks clean for once, no noticeable grease shine near his scalp at all. Mark barely resists the incredibly stupid urge to reach out and touch it.

It takes him a moment to find his words. And his notebook. It’s in Roger’s lap, and he’s thumbing through it casually, poring over the words like it’s no big deal.

“W-what are you doing?” Mark blames the crack in his voice on the fact that he’d just woken up, rather than his own mounting anxiety. Sometimes he wakes up already mid-panic attack. Today, apparently, Roger had decided to give him something to panic about.

_Oh God, what is he reading?_

“Reading,” Roger says cheerfully, and offers one of his trademark you-can’t-stop-me grins even as he’s stretching his arm away from him and out of Mark’s reach. He grabs for it anyways, scrambling to get up onto his knees. “You were knocked out.” He scans another line, humming in consideration. “This is kind of fucked up, Mark.”

“Give that back!” He can’t keep the alarm out of his voice, dread pooling heavy and sinister in his gut. Roger laughs.

“In a good way! Don’t have an aneurysm, Jesus!” He raises an eyebrow playfully, leaning back and letting Mark fall on top of him in his next frantic grab. Mark gets a faceful of Roger’s t-shirt and a whiff of familiar aftershave that makes his head spin without trying to. He sits back up, grimacing at him pleadingly. “Why do you care? You always get to hear my shitty reject songs.”

“It’s different!” He knows he’s blushing but he can’t focus, kicking himself further up the bed to grab again. Roger lets him this time, but the gleam in his eye can’t bode well. “I’m not going to finish it! It’s not fit for human consumption _– Roger!”_

Sure enough, in the next moment he’s on the floor, and Roger has him pinned by the wrists.

Scabs crack and tear. He hardly registers it, breath caught in his throat at the sudden proximity of Roger’s face, looming over him smugly.

Whatever funk Roger has been in, he’s decidedly shaken it off. Nothing to worry about.

“C’mon, Cohen, tell me how it ends. I’m taking an interest in your life.” He says it with a slight curl of his lip, and Mark has a feeling he’s quoting it straight out of a Healthy Relationships pamphlet, the kind they have at the community center and that Collins had probably slipped under Roger’s bedroom door at least once over the years.

“I have no idea,” he manages, stretching his eyes big and innocent. Roger snorts incredulously, but he doesn’t call him on it. _He must be in a_ really _good mood._

“Seriously.” He smiles weakly, a sinking in his chest that he chooses not to identify. It’s probably the place where all of the lies have settled, corroding his insides like bitter acid. He deserves it. “I haven’t thought that far ahead.”

Roger’s eyes flit over his face again a last time before he releases him, sitting back cross-legged and planting his chin in his hand, elbow balanced on his knee. “I’d’ve thought you’d have the whole thing planned down to the costume design,” he comments, seemingly casual, but Mark has known him too long – just like Collins – not to hear the underlying question mark.

That it’s not his style. That he’s been thinking. That Mark could tell him, if he really wanted to, what the hell is up with him lately.

Presented with the option, he feels himself shrivel inward.

“Yeah.” It comes out as a mumble, smile faltering. “I’m working on it.” Roger’s eyes are so green, so earnest. He can’t believe it, after everything that’s happened, that Roger could still be here – surviving, moving forward, making a life. That wasn’t the kind of person that Roger used to be.

But this isn’t the person that he used to be, either. Mark doesn’t even know what kind of person he is, now. If he’s a person at all.

His entire being boils down to scar tissue and the whisper of metal.

The irony doesn’t escape him.

Roger shrugs and hands the notebook back to him with a tentative smile. It occurs to Mark, belatedly, that this is probably his way of apologizing for the week-long silence.

“Guess I’ll leave you to it, then. Wouldn’t want to interrupt a work of genius.”

It’s not until Roger is gone that Mark dares to stuff it back under his mattress where it belongs. He doesn’t want him to know, paralyzed with fear that the next time he’ll grab the other notebook – his journal, bloodstained and damning.

His fingers brush metal, and relief washes through him before he even draws the blade out.

If he can’t confide in Roger or Collins or Maureen, at least he has this.


	6. A Friend's Concern

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, guys, sorry this one is a little short… There actually seem to be a handful of people reading this story, which is more than I thought I'd have, so uh – thanks! Every single review and favorite/follow is golden to me 3 For those of you anxious to see Mark getting help, that process will begin soon, don't worry. Regarding next week's update, I will be in Canada visiting my wife with our partner, and can't promise that it will be on time! But I will get it out as soon as possible. If I can get my shit together, it may actually be early.

The door slams, and Mark realizes with dread that he's alone. Again.

The turmoil that Roger had thrown him into only a handful of days ago threatens to boil straight through his defenses and leave him retching with anxiety on the floor again, scratching at his arms – but he holds his breath.

_One, two, three, four, five, six, se-ven…._

It's been a long, long time since he's used these breathing exercises. Some part of him is dimly surprised that he even remembers them, but they're buried in him like drumbeats and panic attacks, so deep he doesn't think he'll ever get them out. The instructions that his old school counselor had given him were far from comprehensive, but she'd also given him a pamphlet. He'd pored over it day and night for years, searching and desperate, trying to memorize every word and praying this would make him normal.

He can't remember the last time he'd prayed, either.

Mark has no idea where Roger has gone, only that he has. Which is strange. Because Roger has barely left the loft since their little chat.

Maybe that's what's making his skin prickle uncomfortably. This is almost – not quite, never exactly – like he'd felt every time Roger had left the loft just before, and just after, the worst of his withdrawal. That stinging, jerking undercurrent of paranoia that leaves him paralyzed and staring dry-mouthed and unseeing into the sliver of the hall that he can see from his bed for over five minutes after Roger's good and gone.

These days, though, he worries less about Roger and more about himself; rather, less about what Roger does and more about what Roger thinks, specifically of him.

He tries to swallow and his anxiety spikes again when he finds an enormous lump obstructing it, gagging him.

The floor may not escape the contents of his stomach, after all…

He curls tighter into a pitiful ball and squeezes his eyes shut. All he can think of is the calculated distance in Roger's smile as he'd poked his head in and said "I'm heading out. See you later."

There are about a thousand ways to interpret that. Mark is aware that most people probably don't think so.

Mark is also aware that he's settled in some mad, infrequently visited borderland between his dark imagination and the bleaker tones of reality. He's very comfortable here, teetering as he is; at some point, he'll have to decide which way he wants to fall.

Either way, the impact is going to be painful. He doesn't want to think about it.

He doesn't want to think, doesn't want to scratch, doesn't want to breathe –

But he can't stop.

The thoughts, the voice, the blade, all blur together and he locks his jaw to keep from screaming. If he starts, he's afraid he'll never stop.

* * *

Roger struggles to come up with an actual plan even as he's walking through the café doors.

Collins waves him over from their regular booth in the far corner, where presumably they appeared less like troublemakers and more like weary, comfortable customers. At least, that was what Collins and Joanne had theorized, and none of the rest of them cared enough about where they put their asses to object to the new location.

There must be some merit to it, too, because the waiter's face – George, not that he probably knows any of their first names – doesn't pinch anymore when they walk in.

But that's beside the point.

The point is that Roger had suggested that they all get together today and now he's here, and they're here, and Joanne is fondly wiping whipped cream from Maureen's hot chocolate from her nose, and Maureen is giggling, and Collins is staring at him with one eyebrow cocked (how does he  _do_  that and where can Roger learn?) as he slides uneasily into the booth, fiddling with the broken zipper on his jacket.

"So," he begins, with absolutely no idea of what might come out of his mouth next.

"So, about Mark," Collins says conversationally, and Maureen looks suddenly serious, straightening up and propping her elbows on the table, hands clasped.

"Yeah,  _about_ Mark. What's up with him? Roger?" She turns to him expectantly, and he bristles in return despite himself. He and Maureen hadn't always gotten along; it's been years now, since the explosive fights and the withdrawal and the bruises and the tears, but some of the instinct to tense whenever she glances his way still hasn't faded.

"I – something." He mutters, folding his arms against his chest sullenly. Trust the rest of them to know what to say better than he did. "He's fuckin' out of it, lately."

"Well I  _know_  that." She imitates his scowl perfectly and looks around the table. "None of us are blind, Roger. Where is he now?"

That's another thing that Roger really can't stand about Maureen. (Alternatively, something that he really, really loves about Maureen, if you catch him on a good day or if you got him drunk enough.) She gets straight to the point.

Collins looks positively grim. "You left him alone?"

"What choice did I have? He can't be here, he wouldn't let us – look, you know Mark." He shifts uncomfortably in his seat, realizing that he's having trouble meeting anyone's eyes. Some deep, Mark-loyal center of his conscience is screaming at him that he's a traitor and that he has no fucking right to be talking about Mark behind his back like this, even if Mark is probably at home right now writing morbid stories that sound like suicide notes. "He doesn't want help. He doesn't want us to worry."

"That kid's got a death wish," Collins mutters mutinously, and Joanne nods reluctantly.

"We used to go out to lunch every week or so," she offers, and from the look on her face Roger isn't alone in his guilt. He shoots her an intensely grateful look, which she doesn't seem to understand. Ah, well. "I haven't seen him in – God, over a month."

"That's not like him." Maureen actually sounds upset, something Roger would normally make a sarcastic comment about. At least she's taking something seriously for once, he thinks, and bites his tongue fiercely. From the warning look Collins shoots him to the less-than-gentle nudge he gets under the table, it was the right choice. "What are we going to do?"

"I vote we get his mom on the phone," Roger huffs, turning restlessly to stare out at the gray drizzle. He thinks he hears Joanne cough to cover a laugh. He kind of hopes so.

"He won't listen to his mom, either. He hasn't even called her yet this year, has he?" Maureen looks uneasy when he turns back to face her, reluctantly, and that makes  _him_  uneasy. She'd known Mark so much longer than Roger, really, and so much more intimately – but only if they were technical.

Roger deliberately does not think about Mark's shoulders bumping gently into his, or the way he bit his lip and grinned, caught in a lie.

He doesn't think about that, because in the end, Mark is always going to be more important than a flush of heat across the back of his neck.

"How should I know?" he snaps, and then winces at the absurdity of the statement. Everyone looks at him.

"Tom, maybe you should…" Joanne begins, wringing her hands and looking up at him, but Collins is already shaking his head in exasperation. Roger doesn't miss the fact that it's directed almost entirely at him, specifically. He scowls harder and sinks into his seat, and tries not to feel ashamed.

How long has Mark been declining like this, and he hadn't even noticed?

How could he have been so fucking self-absorbed?

Of course, Mark has always been an expert at hiding. For all that he'd spouted off at Roger for years about openness and honesty and good old-fashioned communication between roommates and lovers and friends and in-betweens, Roger still doesn't know why he really broke up with Maureen, or what the hell happened to Benny, or why Mark makes a special point not to call his father even when his mother used to remind him almost daily.

Still. It stings to think that all of this has been one-sided.

It stings even more to know that a lot of that is probably his own fault.

He's stirred from his brooding by Maureen all but stomping on his foot. "Earth to Roger! What do you think about an intervention?"

Her eyes are gleaming, and he eyes them warily, kicking her back rather half-heartedly. "That's the worst idea I've ever heard in my life. Next."

"Why?" she demands, and Roger nearly groans at the way her chest heaves. Great, she's already got her heart set on it.

Sometimes he really wonders what Mark saw in her.

"Because," he says slowly, holding her gaze for a painfully long time. "Mark doesn't think he  _needs_  an intervention. Goddamn, maybe he doesn't! Maybe we're all just overreacting." God, he hopes so. "Besides," he plows on, steadfastly ignoring the pout brewing on her face. It might have distracted a lesser man, but Roger was  _immune_ , so  _ha_. "He isn't going to stick around while we lecture him on, on – we don't even know what his problem is. If you ask me he's just fuckin' depressed. Let him ride it out."

That, Roger can identify with. Depression had chewed viciously at several years of his life, and he preferred not to think about it.

But if he didn't think about those years at all then he'd have significantly fewer memories of Mark Cohen.

 _Sometimes_ , he thought as he pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed,  _you just have to endure it._

Maureen, obviously, isn't convinced – God, she's stubborn. She's always been stubborn. Roger wants to pound his head forward onto the desk and keep at it until he can't hear her anymore, but alas, Collins is oh-so-casually digging the heel of his boots into Roger's toes.

"He isn't going to ride it out, Roger! He's not you. He needs our help." She frowns deeply at him, so much like she used to do when she caught him red-eyed and stumbling that he has a serious moment of déjà vu. "Do you think it could be drugs?"

Roger throws back his head and laughs, Collins be damned. "You think I wouldn't know if he was high? Look who you're talking to!"

She narrows her eyes. Her makeup is really far more subdued than he's come to expect. Maybe she's just that worried about it. "You're not with him twenty four hours a day, Roger. You don't know what he could be doing right now! He could be swallowing a bottle of pills –"

"Maureen!" Joanne grips her arm with white knuckles, glaring.

"Well, he could!" She turns to her fiancée with a defiant, faintly venomous look.  _Oh, yeah,_  Roger remembers belatedly.  _Maureen's always been a little overprotective._

She turns back to Roger, next, and he doesn't have to work to scowl. There's enough of the old animosity between them for him to draw on, and she understands that well enough not to resent him for it. "For what it's worth, Roger, I think you're right."

"Oh, am I? Imagine that." He smirks, but it feels hollow. He feels sick.

Collins lets out a long-suffering sigh, and through the thin mask of humor Roger can sense the conversation starting to wear on him. Tom really was looking thin these days… "We need to find out what's going on before we can confront the man," he summarizes, stretching his arms over his head. "Right. Well, since we're here, we might as well eat. Waiter!"

Roger can't help but feel that there should have been more to this conversation, but Collins looks so tired and so sad and all he can see is Mark's blue eyes, tired and sad and a thousand things that Roger is afraid to start naming.

The menus are passed out, and he makes one final, desperate attempt.

"Can't we just," he starts, and helplessly rakes his eyes over the familiar drink choices. He isn't going to be able to stomach anything with it churning like that. "Wait for him to come to us?"

 _One of us,_  he doesn't say.  _Probably not me._

Roger doesn't know what about that makes him want to punch a hole in the wall and scream, except that Mark doesn't seem all that fond of his company lately, and that's been more of a blow to his self-esteem than he likes to admit.

It hurts elsewhere, too, like that too-deep part of his chest, but he doesn't think about it.

He didn't have any doubts that he'd probably done something to deserve it.

" _You_  talk to him," Collins tells him, pointing with his fork, and Joanne nods, and Maureen gives him another expectant look, and Roger realizes that he doesn't have a choice.

What the hell, honestly! He'd called this meeting, he was supposed to be in control, he was supposed to be the one in the know, here!

He glares out at the drizzle again and, sullenly chewing on one of Collins' fries, tries not to see Mark's white face or a bathroom spattered in blood.

It's not a bad omen. It's not.

He tells himself all the way home, but he still doesn't know what to say.

* * *

Mark wipes the ink on his hands futilely on his pants and stares down at the page, frustration creeping up his spine and making him tense. As though he wasn't  _already_  frustrated. He throws his pen across the room and it hits the wall with a pathetic clatter that makes him feel even worse.

He's been writing for two hours and  _nothing_.

Nothing.

Just like him.

He wants to laugh. He wants to cry. Where the hell has Roger gone, anyway? He's missing a real show.

Mark feels like his chest could fall in and crumble at any moment.

Part of him wants to reach for Roger, when he's spent so long restraining himself from doing just that; the other part is throwing down his notebook, flinging Michael and Rick and lives he doesn't have, won't ever have, and reaching with trembling, angry hands for the box of tacks on his desk.

He could go for the blade, make some real damage.

But what would Roger say?

He gives himself an ugly grimace and is momentarily obscenely glad that he doesn't keep a mirror in his room. Why would Roger even care?

Roger wouldn't be concerned, he would be  _pissed_.

Worse, maybe he just wouldn't care at all.

He can almost see it, Roger's disgusted sneer, his crossed arms, his eyes flickering mockingly from Mark's face to his wrist and back again.

He fumbles with the box and presses the first tiny piece of metal to the inside of his wrist, feels the prick of the puncture – somehow, even after everything he's done to himself, it still makes his eyes water – and gives a helpless, silent exhalation.

He wants the numbness. He wants to feel nothing, be nothing.

Where is Roger? Where are any of them?

They don't care.

_No one cares._

His gut clenches suddenly. The knife is right there, in his pocket, where he can feel it – he could – he needs to…

 _Pain junkie,_  his own voice taunts him. He can't bring himself to feel anything but humiliated resignation.

If he's quick, maybe he can bleed out by the time Roger gets back.

( _Forget the promise, forget April, forget Roger, he doesn't care doesn't care doesn't care –_ )

Mark barely has his fingers wrapped around the handle of the knife when the front door bangs open. His eyes sting. He jerks his hand back out of his pocket and leans down, stiffly, to grab the notebook off the floor and stare bleakly at his own scribbled handwriting, his own convoluted plotlines.

When Roger ducks his head into the room and smiles that calculating smile again, he looks back up and plasters on his own. It hurts his teeth.

The image of his own ravaged wrists burns behind his eyelids.


	7. Who Knows

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy shit we’re seven chapters deep! Wowwww. I hope ya’ll know this is probably my favorite multi-chapter that I’ve ever written and I seriously plan on finishing it this year. I actually went and counted the Fridays left this year, and I have no excuse not to finish this fic. So if ya’ll are willing to keep on encouraging me, I’ll do my very best!  
> Also, I’m sorry that this chapter was a week late. I was in Canada visiting my wife with our life partner and we had a great time! x) Hope this is worth the wait.

It's entirely Roger's fault that Mark ends up at the community center doors at ten in the morning on a Monday afternoon.

For days now all Roger has done is watch him. He's made every excuse to pop into Mark's room – sometimes he doesn't leave. Sometimes he peeks in and asks Mark, "Whatcha doin'?" so casually that Mark almost fools himself into thinking that Roger is actually  _interested._ But that can't be true, because not even Mark is interested in his own life, or this damn screenplay. Michael makes him want to throw things, and Michael is supposed to  _be_  him.

He supposes there's some kind of symbolism there. He's too tired to look for it.

In any case, all of Roger's uncharacteristic hovering and smiling is making him twitch. It's practically impossible to pull up his sleeve at all when Roger is home nowadays. He never knows when he's going to just fucking waltz in and catch him red-handed.

Literally.

He's settled for quick, nervous razor-bites in the shower, but watching the pink water wash over the porcelain reminds him so much of April that he has to stumble out and huddle on the, shuddering and remembering.

Life Support is a good enough excuse to get him out of the house without Roger trailing suspiciously after him. Mark had considered it for a long few hours in the middle of the night, staring at a blank page, sweating. Collins hasn't talked about going since he's been back in town, so it's probably safe to say he won't be there…

And the people there will only remember him the way he was, smiling and apologetic and good-naturedly awkward. Back when he had it under wraps.

Mark misses that version of himself with a poignant sort of despair.

So… here he is.

The building is still covered in graffiti, and the doors still don't quite line up in the frame. Mark wonders vaguely if it's still as drafty as it had been a year ago, and if he's going to have to keep his coat on the whole time. He hopes not.

At the same time, he recognizes an opportunity for unquestioned sleeves when he sees one.

He takes a ridiculous amount of time just standing there on the pavement, gazing sightlessly at the worn brick and trying to convince himself that this is what he wants to spend his morning doing. He takes a lot of deep breaths. It makes him dizzy, which he supposes is as close to courage as he's going to get; he ducks his head and slips inside with his breath caught in his throat.

It's not like you have to share anything. It'll be just like the old days.

The old days had mostly consisted of the group – Paul, Steve, Ali, Gordon, Pam, Sue, Roger, Collins, Angel,  _Mimi_  – sharing, and ranting, and talking over one another, and crying and laughing and hugging while Mark sat in the back and clutched the sides of his chair and smiled as he declined every invitation to speak.

They'd never entirely stopped issuing them, but he was resolute. He didn't need to share. He didn't have problems, like these people – it would be a crime for him to complain about his inability to hold down a job to these people who might be  _dying_.

Angel had never seen it that way. Mark fervently wishes that Angel were still around, to corner him against the coat rack and ask him what was wrong.

There's no one to confide in now. No one willing to do the work; no one willing to put up with him that long, long enough to understand how lost a cause he is; no one to invite him to talk, just talk, like he matters.

But Mark doesn't worry about that. He already knows he doesn't matter.

He doesn't realize that his feet have already taken him to where he's going until Paul is already coming over, smiling huge and warm and welcoming, with is hand extended. "Mark! It's been a while! How have you been? We're about to get started."

Mark numbly shakes his hand, feeling suddenly dirty and infectious in a way that none of these people ever could be. "Fine. Uh, good."

Paul peers at him closely, dark eyebrows knitting together. "Are you sure?"

Some part of him wonders what his face is doing right now. If Paul's reaction is any indication, it's not what he wants it to be doing.

_This was a fucking terrible idea, Cohen, can't you ever keep your angst to yourself?_

"Um," he stammers, fumbling for words. Damn it, why is he even here? "Yeah. I'm sure. I'm, uh, just – here to get some footage," he manages with a tight smile, weakly holding up his (recently dusted) camera, and miraculously Gordon speaks up, sounding bored and skeptical as ever.  _God bless that cynical bastard._

"Much as we've all missed the camera man, could we maybe get started?" He's leaning forward in his chair, chin in his hands and eyebrows raised in challenge, and Paul visibly forces himself not to roll his eyes as he glances back at him.

"The meeting doesn't start until everyone gets here," he tells him patiently, eyes still fixed knowingly at that something on Mark's face that he's starting to panic about. He fights the crazed impulse to start rubbing it frantically, until the skin peels off, until his misery sinks back into his bones where it belongs, not in his pores where anyone could see. Paul can't see into his head, he tells himself reasonably.

"Everyone  _is_  here," Gordon counters with just a hint of a sneer, and it reminds Mark of Roger so much that he almost laughs. He only just restrains himself, with the thought of everyone's eyes snapping to him at once. "Come on. None of us have a lot of time to waste."

It's not really a fair jab. Paul is positive too. Mark doesn't say anything about it, just politely backs a step further away from the man blocking his path and starts to edge around him.

Paul, recognizing defeat, gives him one last imploring look before sighing deeply and going back to the group. "Alright, alright. Mark, why don't you have a seat." He stands behind a chair and braces his hands on the back of it, looking around the circle approvingly. "Who's here today?"

Mark inches forward and grabs a chair of his own from the stack against the wall, eyeing the circle with a sinking heart. The group has gotten smaller; besides Gordon, Paul, and Sue, none of the names or the faces are familiar to him.

This is going to be even more uncomfortable than he thought.

He sits down anyway, because the alternative is  _Roger_ , and Sue smiles at him. He musters a smile back. It seems to appease her because she turns back to the group and says her name, loudly and pointedly. It takes him a full minute to realize that she's just skipped over him.

A rush of gratitude leaves him breathless and staring, wide-eyed and desperately appreciative. She winks.

Mark decides suddenly that Sue is his new favorite person in the whole wide miserable world.

"So, with Easter coming up, I was thinking – and obviously this is only a suggestion – that we should talk about our families, blood or otherwise…"

Paul is talking again and it takes all of his energy just to focus on the words. Now that he's sitting down, his whole body feels tense and stiff and awkward. Unfamiliar eyes drag over him curiously. He wrings his hands in his lap and pretends not to notice.

 _If you hadn't stopped coming, they wouldn't be staring,_  his pet voice says nastily. He grimaces and shoos it, fingers slipping up his sleeve compulsively to rub at the raised marks there. Several of them are painfully cracked and scabbed. He's  _not_  going to worry about that right now… He's just going to smile and fade into the background.

And  _that_  seems ominously descriptive of his entire life right now.

"… You might not be wrong, Gordon, but don't you think that you should give your brother the benefit of the doubt?"

There's a smattering of thoughtful murmurs and Gordon snorts audibly. Mark's thoughts have gone in at least ten misshapen circles by the time he realizes Paul is looking at him again, and even though he's not really being addressed, it unnerves him enough to guiltily start listening again.

Gordon is leaning forward, eyes glinting with a frayed sort of challenge. "Do you think I haven't tried? For fuck's sake, Paul, you've known me long enough –"

"I know." Paul smiles achingly and leans back apologetically, scratching his head. "I know. I just wish that you could get along with the people you have left. We all want the best for each other here, Gordon."

Gordon is skinnier than Mark remembers him. He's still gawky and tall and severe-looking, though, suspicious in stillness, hands secretly wringing in his lap. Mark had always really identified with that aspect of Gordon, one that he wasn't entirely sure anyone else had noticed – much as he pretended that they didn't, these meetings made Gordon anxious as hell.

He tries to scrape together what he knows about Gordon from the several meetings they'd attended together last year and comes up worryingly short. He's a teacher. He's a lot like Roger, in a lot of ways, in that he's unapproachable and has an impressive scowl to match his attitude. Mark vaguely remembers comparing them in his mind, eyes darting between them from one side of the circle to the other.

They'd never gotten along very well, to his recollection… That was probably an understatement. But that really isn't surprising.

After all, Mark thinks that if he met himself he'd be absolutely fucking disgusted.

Bloody wrists bloody heart all out in the open for everyone to see, everyone to know, to know poor Marky Cohen's a pathetic wretch and will be his whole miserable life.

It's getting hard to tell "the voice" – his own nagging, sneering voice – from his conscious, deliberate thoughts.

He's lost count of his breaths. His chest is heaving. Sue is peering at him in concern.

"What about you, Mark?" Paul asks, and he freezes halfway through picking a scab, eyes like chipped saucers. He probably looks like a fraying wire, pathetic and maybe a little dangerous. (That's how Roger had looked, those days and weeks he'd prowled and thrashed and sobbed out of nowhere, that's how Mark imagines himself except less, always less, barely anything, maybe he can just disappear?)

Belatedly, he realizes that he's panicking.

"What?" he manages, praising every higher power he can think of for keeping his voice from cracking just then. Paul smiles patiently.

"What about you?" he repeats easily. His voice is honey smooth. Mark hates it. "I know that you might not necessarily celebrate Easter," and here he's apologetic, and Mark wants hysterically to laugh because  _God I'm a terrible Jew you have no idea how long it's been since I've gone home for Chanukah_  but his throat is so constricted that there's no option. "But I know that at least some of your friends do. Will you be alone this holiday, or do you have someone to spend it with?"

There's a soft, special emphasis on  _alone_  that makes Mark's head suddenly too light on his shoulders and before he knows it he's standing, lips stretched into a tight, painful smile as he stumbles back and around his chair.

There are so many eyes on him. They can all see, through his sleeves through his chest where everything is clogging and sticking like black tar, like poison, they can  _see him._

 _Don't don't don't don't_ look _–!_

"That's, um, a good question actually I should probably go back and ask – ask Roger what his plans are – er," he scrambles, desperately, fighting the urge to turn and bolt and almost forgetting to snatch his camera up in the process. "Thanks for having me, again, I'll s-see you around probably –"

He promptly loses the battle.

Every pair of eyes follows him all the way out.

They don't stop tugging at the back of his sweater until he's half a block away.

* * *

He finds out that he has exactly fifteen dollars and several grimy pennies in his wallet, and promptly spends over half of it on the first pack of cigarettes he's bought for himself in years. He's choking one down, remembering miserably that he'd never really gotten the hang of the smoking thing even when he was doing it back when he and Roger were joined at the hip and apparently the lungs, when someone strolls around the corner and bumps his shoulder.

"Got a light?" Gordon stares him down and Mark feels like he has to crane his neck to get a good look at him – not that he really wants to.

His tongue is burning and he exhales reluctantly, nervously flicking ash from the tip and trying to smile. "Yeah – uh, give me a second."

The last thing he wants to do is encourage anyone – let alone someone who reminds him so very fucking much of  _Roger_  – to hang around him while he's trying to stave off a monstrous panic attack, but Gordon just shrugs and leans against the building beside him, and eventually Mark stops fumbling in his pocket and hands over the battered blue lighter he's been using for the past year and a half.

Half-smiling, Gordon takes it and looks back down at his hands as he flicks it. On, out, on again, and out – and then Mark remembers.

"You don't smoke," he says slowly, mouth tasting of ash and heart sluggishly, sickeningly racing on. It still hasn't stopped pounding and he's been standing out here for almost twenty minutes. How the hell did Gordon even find him, unless he followed him?

"Not since I was nineteen." Gordon shrugs, flicking the lighter again. It putters pitifully. Mark is incredulous that it still works at all, not that he's complaining. He doesn't have money for a new one. He occupies himself with his cigarette, which is shrinking rapidly down to the filter, and his shaking fingers, and his rubbery knees, and the way Gordon's hair falls in soft, dark curls into his eyes.

Mark laughs stiltedly. He can't bring himself to ask the guy to leave, at this point. It would be too telling.

Not that he's not already visibly shaking.

Not that he can't feel those eyes, eyes all over him, making his scabs itch and crack and ooze.

Not that he can't feel Gordon's eyes, dark and serious, following the line of his wrist.

_He knows he knows he knows they all know –!_

Fuck, his mouth tastes disgusting now. The cigarette is gone, crumbling between his fingers, and he lets it go and licks his lips and closes his eyes and just  _gives up_.

_I don't care who knows anymore._

_I want to be done._

Funny, it's not the first time he's thought those exact words. It may be the first time he has the means to do anything about it though.

While he's contemplating his suicide, Gordon is still scrutinizing him and playing with his lighter like they've been hanging out on sketchy streetcorners together for years. If he actually  _was_ Roger, that wouldn't be terribly inaccurate.

Gordon wears less eyeliner than Roger, Mark thinks to himself dazedly. None, actually. His lungs feel oddly deflated in his chest. His knuckles are probably white around the blade in his pocket, the warm plastic sweaty in his palm. There's a bathroom in the café around the corner that isn't too disgusting and he can imagine, head swimming and teeth aching-itching, how he could slip in and lock the door and bring the metal to his wrist and whine out loud at the relief of the tension headache growing between his eyes.

Another five minutes have passed. Probably. Gordon stops glancing at him and hands the lighter back, pulling his coat tighter around himself. It's not flannel or leather, or a band t-shirt, so Roger would definitely not wear it.

"If you ever want to yell at the world," he says suddenly, eyes laser-focusing on Mark's so that he almost wants to stumble backward and throw up his arms to shield himself. "I always come to the Saturday night meetings. And Mondays, too."

Somehow, Mark finds his voice. It feels detached from him, nearly drowned out by the buzzing in his head. "I don't know if I'm really cut out for, um… I mean…"

He almost laughs again, and this time he's almost sure he would have started crying, so he's intensely grateful when Gordon interrupts him with a slight shrug.

"I might feel less bad about ditching if I have a partner," he says breezily, and gives Mark a pointed look as he brushes past. He bumps his shoulder again in that weird, friendly way. There's something like sympathy practically glowing in his eyes and it makes Mark almost sick to think about where it might be stemming from. "Just an offer. See you around, Mark."

"See you," Mark rasps, watching him go helplessly. The blade in his pocket is screaming for him. His wrists are wailing, too, for mercy or for more abuse he just can't tell anymore.

They both know which it will be, anyway.

_Just like last time. Just like every time._

_Last time…_

When Gordon disappears around the corner, Mark staggers down the street and up eight flights of stairs like he's fleeing from a ghost.

Maybe he's the ghost. He's not sure if that counts.

* * *

The blade bites one thin vein and he hits his head against the bathroom wall, biting his lip to keep from gasping. Roger calls his name distantly. He doesn't sound like Gordon. It's okay.  _It's okay. It's okay…_

Mark takes several deep breaths through his nose. Blood is trickling down over his fingers, slow and thin. He's flooded with blissful numbness, apathy.

The hospital room fades from behind his eyelids. The sirens fade from his ears.

He's here and now, not back there and then.

It's okay. It's okay.

"Mark?" Roger calls again, brightly. He's getting closer. Mark reaches out and locks the bathroom door, and stares at his red-ribbon arm in listless fascination. The anxiety bleaches out of him through the roots of his hair.

For now.

"Maureen brought over a bunch of old tapes earlier, I thought a couple of them looked pretty decent. You in?" The floor creaks just outside the bathroom door. Roger's got a big smirk in his voice, the kind that normally makes Mark's eyelashes flutter. Even numb, he goes a little weak in the knees for it.

"I'm kind of tired…" Mark manages, smiling strained and frazzled. "Maybe not tonight, Roger." At least his voice is steady. That's an improvement.

Gordon probably thinks he's out of his fucking mind after today. Paul, too.

_Everyone sees through you._

_Everyone knows._

"I've got popcorn," he sing-songs, shaking something – presumably a box of stolen dollar-store snacks. Mark hastily wipes at the shallow new cuts lined shakily along the crease of his elbow. "C'mon, Mark, I know you don't have anything better to do…"

Roger is never this friendly, not without prodding. Not unless he's had a really good day.

But Mark can never deny him anything.

"I'm coming, I'm coming…" he laughs, and pulls his sleeve down again. The knife slips harmlessly back into his pocket.

He can continue this tonight.


	8. One Wrong Move

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Things are going to start getting gradually more intense here so hold onto your hats. Also, a few people told me they were really curious to see Gordon’s involvement in this story, so here’s some more Gordon for you! Make of him what you will. Personally, I adore him. Review if you can!  
> Also, a note: if anyone was wondering, the ~voice~ in Mark’s head is meant to be his intrusive thoughts. Just to clarify.

Roger’s friendly mood lasts all of two more days.

In all the time he’s known him, Mark feels like he should be able to predict Roger’s mood swings by now. There’s some kind of pattern that he used to have a pretty firm grip on, but it eludes him now – it’s probably the agonizing seconds between breaths that make it so hard to tell now, the hyperawareness he has of every passing moment that he’s wearing these wounds on his body like a crime scene.

He has to admit, looking down at them, that his arms are starting to resemble a murder victim’s.

(That doesn’t stop him from pressing the knife down again.)

It’s almost a relief when Roger slams his door while he’s passing it on the way to the kitchen – he’d spent almost half an hour working up the motivation to get out of bed for the glass of water he only wants because his headache is starting to get unbearable, and he’s pretty sure he’s dehydrated.

Honestly, Roger’s casually concerned friend routine has been scraping his nerves raw from the first day. That’s just not Roger. Mark _knows_ Roger, however distant he’s been in the past year... And casual was not something that Roger did. Not like this.

The last time Roger had been _casual_ about anything, he’d been so goddamn stoned that he’d actually handed over the syringe without a fight, grinning.

_“S’okay, Mark, it’s not like I’m fuckin’ addicted…”_

Roger did not do lukewarm friendliness, gentle concern. Something was very, very wrong – everything was so tense, forced, like someone was pulling his strings. When Mark is lucid enough to puzzle it out, he groans. _Collins_. Has to be.

No one else is that observant. No one else would care enough.

(Roger, especially, would never fucking notice he was drowning until he washed up on the shore with a note to outdo April’s.)

Sometimes… sometimes he just really fucking misses having Tom around.

But that would mean the end of this charade. That would mean dragging himself out of bed and actually doing something about it, which is too impossible and daunting and exhausting just to think about to even consider.

In the end it’s probably a good thing that Roger is the one still living with him, because at least Roger won’t be bothered by the muted sound of Mark’s existential panic vibrating through the walls. He’ll sleep through it, like always; and no matter how many spark flares of hope he lights in Mark’s chest, Roger’s never going to look at him with the same desperate adoration Mark still occasionally sees in his own, in the mirror.

The loft goes chillingly silent again. Mark finds himself tiptoeing to and from the bathroom, and forgoing food altogether. He doesn’t know what he’s done to piss Roger off – or maybe he’s just in one of those moods, again, where he hates the universe and himself and his whiny, good-for-nothing roommate who can’t hold down a job.

(Mark remembers weeks where neither of them had a job, spent eating stale Captain Crunch – dry, with their fingers because they couldn’t afford milk and it was more fun this way, anyway – laughing and balling up the Classifieds to throw at each other across the table.)

It’s somehow less distressing that his chest feels like it’s got a massive crater in it when Roger isn’t around to critically observe him around every corner, green eyes narrow and sharp and picking him apart. As though he needs any help with that.

 _It’s not_ fair _. I’ve left him so many loose edges._

He doesn’t look at Roger’s door as he passes it on the way to his own room, clutching his arm to keep the blood from seeping into his sleeves. He disregards the nausea that chokes him when he wonders, in passing, what Roger would think if he came out and saw him right now, like this.

Roger’s door stays thankfully closed and deathly quiet. So much for impromptu movies and popcorn, huh?

The crater in his chest begins to feel like a graveyard.

They’re not fighting, but they’re not talking. Mark can deal with that.

* * *

 

Roger really fucking hates himself sometimes.

Collins is right. Everyone is right, and he’s the only fucking one who wasn’t taking this seriously until now – there’s something seriously wrong with Mark.

He can’t figure it out. Mark’s always been a painfully open book, hard as he tried to keep his secrets. Or maybe Roger had just assumed…

Fuck, he doesn’t know anymore.

It’s like he doesn’t know Mark at all. A year ago, so much as inviting Mark into his room would have been enough to have him beaming like a kid on Christmas morning.

So much of the way they’ve interacted these past few months is based on quiet hurt, silent pleading. Roger leans his back against his headboard and fists his overgrown hair, frustrated, and listens to Mark padding cautiously past his door.

To the bathroom and back. And again. And again. Every few hours, like clockwork, all night.

(What the fuck is he doing in there? Pissing his brains out? Passing a kidney stone?)

He thinks he’s being _subtle_ , probably.

There are a lot of things that Roger would rather be doing on a Saturday night than locking himself in his room and pulling his hair out in soundless aggravation. He wants answers. He wants Mark’s smile not to look so goddamn haunted, so fake. He wants to know what the fuck he did, or didn’t notice, and what the fuck he has to do to fix it.

Angrily, he chews the polish from his nails and glares holes in the wall separating their rooms, half-tempted to press his ear to it and listen. Sometimes Mark has conversations with himself – or, well, he used to. When he was okay. When Roger didn’t want to shake him until he hiccupped the whole story, until he was nineteen again and smiling and shoving that camera in his face

He doesn’t know how this happened. Or when.

When had Mark torn away from him so cleanly he hadn’t even left a scar? How is he supposed to fix it, when he has to drag the man out of his room for a movie?

It’s like their roles have reversed, and he doesn’t remember agreeing to this.

Collins was right and everyone is counting on him to sniff it out, to crack Mark open and cradle him while he cries. But Mark’s not crying, he’s numb. That’s scarier. Mark has always tried to be numb, but he’s never succeeded. Now his face is blank.

Roger used to be able to read him like the back of his goddamn hand.

He growls wordlessly and grabs for a notebook and a pen off his nightstand. If he can’t get Mark to talk, maybe he’ll just _write_ it out the old-fashioned way.

The old Mark would approve. He’s not sure about this one.

He flips furiously to an open page and bites the end savagely. Too bad. He’s doing it now, and Mark’s not going to have a choice.

* * *

 

For whatever fateful reason – Mark wonders later if he was just subconsciously lonely, and then scoffs, because there was nothing subconscious about it – Mark finds himself making a second attempt at a cigarette in the forgotten lot behind the community center, surrounded by chunks of concrete and forlorn, scattered weeds.

This lighter is a piece of shit. It takes him upward of five minutes to get so much as a puff out of it, and then within seconds he’s coughing, blinking furiously, glad that there’s no one around. His eyes are still watering when the door he’d forgotten even existed behind him creaks open, and a tall figure slips out, wriggling into a worn black jacket.

Mark takes another hasty drag and wonders why God hates him so much.

_Maybe he thought you’d want a voyeur. You know, for when you off yourself?_

Gordon blinks at him, seeming momentarily taken aback by his presence. Or maybe his existence in general. _Me too, buddy_.

“Mark,” he says finally, pausing and deliberately leaning back against the wall beside him. He raises his eyebrows without accusation. “Skipping?”

Mark licks his lips and gives a halfheartedly sheepish look.

Gordon, unsmiling but not unfriendly, reaches out and plucks the lighter from where it’s dangling loosely between his fingers.

Years ago, this scene would have been reversed – it would have been Roger, moodily puffing on a Marlboro on the fire escape, and Mark beside him, absentmindedly playing with his lighter while their shoulders bumped together. He’d say something dry and sardonic and Roger would snort, tilt his head back and laugh into the night.

Then he’d pass Mark his cigarette, tauntingly, and Mark would take a quick drag just to humor him, just to keep himself from leaning forward and kissing the taste from his lips.

He figured Roger probably wouldn’t appreciate that. He’d never done it.

_If you had, maybe he’d never have looked twice at that junkie downstairs. That’s what you thought about her when you connected the dots, isn’t it?_

Mark grits his teeth stares up at the sun until his eyes water just to have an excuse.

That voice, that fucking voice, he can’t stand it. It’s him but it’s not and he doesn’t know where it’s coming from. Possibly from hell. Maybe from the graveyard in his chest.

Maybe he is a ghost, after all. A living one, miserable at best. Destined to be lonely. Trapped here, for no good reason at all.

Tormenting the people who are still breathing.

“I quit a few years ago,” Gordon says unexpectedly, and when Mark looks back at him – still squinting sunspots out of his eyes – he’s staring up at the clouds, casual as ever. The lighter has gone out, but Gordon makes no move to flick it again. Mark resists the urge to reach and grab for it, skin itching at the thought of losing something that he related to so much that he’d had for so pathetically long.

It takes him a minute to realize he’s supposed to respond. “Oh.” He lowers the cigarette awkwardly. “Um. Do you want me to…?”

He moves to stop it and Gordon reaches out and catches his wrist, making a face. “No, it’s fine.”

Mark stares down at his fingers curved around his arm, wondering if he’s really that small or if Gordon’s fingers are just long. The skin beneath his sweater is burning at the contact but he’s used to that by now – and if he makes a noise, Gordon’s going to give him one of those long, searching looks that make him squirm and remember guiltily that he hadn’t called his mother back in so long that she probably thinks he’s dead.

The silence is getting awkward. Mark is pretty sure that’s his fault but he’s not sure if he can fix it. Gordon releases him with a speculative expression.

“You seem off,” he says bluntly, flicking the lighter again, and just like that they’re back to square one.

Mark swallows. His mouth tastes awful, but that’s the price of these disgusting things. At least he’s not in the middle of an anxiety attack anymore. “Nah.”

That doesn’t seem to deter the other man, and he doesn’t know why he thought it would. _Gordon is not Roger._ This seems more relevant than ever. “You think you’re the only one walking around like a zombie around here?” Gordon wrinkles his nose, not really amused but smiling self-deprecatingly anyway. “Don’t insult me, camera man. I went to grad school. Where _is_ that camera of yours, anyway?”

His hair is still a wild curly mess, limper than Mark remembers it being at group last year. It sets his teeth on edge, remembering that Gordon is one of them – dying, and not bothering to pretend otherwise. That’s another thing that sets him apart from Roger.

Roger gets angry so easily. Roger is ignoring him, right now, and for what?

(He can’t complain, he shouldn’t complain, if Roger starts paying attention again how will he hide this, how will he get through the fucking day?)

“I don’t take it _everywhere_ with me,” he manages, laughing and it _almost_ sounds real. Gordon doesn’t look convinced; he doesn’t look accusatory, either. It relaxes him a little to realize that he’s not being called out right now. Not really.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you without it before,” Gordon says, shrugging. “That’s all.”

But his eyes are fixed on Mark like he knows, with such overwhelming sympathy that Mark has to look away, grimacing when he realizes the ash has burnt right down to his fingertips. Again. He drops it and puts it out clumsily with his sneaker, dusting his hands off on his pants. He doesn’t even fucking like smoking. His mouth tastes like a trench now. Gordon is still watching him, probably, but for once Mark kind of wants him to. Doesn’t want him to leave.

The lot hadn’t seemed so empty when he’d first slunk back here, but now he can’t imagine staying if Gordon chooses to head back inside.

 _With the rest of them_ , his mind whispers. _Aren’t they supposed to care about you?_

A well of loneliness that’s been growing in the back of his throat for months now suddenly overflows, and he finds the words bitterly forced out of him no matter how he tries to hold them back. “You know, everyone else around here is always going on about how nothing is forever and you just have to live for today. But I’m not allowed? To change. Or to be anything they didn’t fucking _expect._ ” His eyes start to sting again. He can’t look up.

Gordon is humoring him, and that’s it. There’s no one in the goddamn world who should have less pity for him than this guy.

“I’m just – I’m so sick of it. Maybe you just weren’t looking hard enough, huh? I haven’t changed. I’m exactly the same.”

His hands won’t stop shaking.

“People see what they want to see,” Gordon offers, hesitating before reaching to pat him on the back. His hands aren’t as big as Mark had originally thought. Roger’s are bigger. They’re thin and steady, and he realizes that it’s not just his hands shaking.

Gordon is looking at him with a slightly wary expression, and Mark realizes that he expects him to jerk away from the simple touch. But he doesn’t want to. Can’t. It’s been so, so fucking long since anyone has touched him besides Roger and Collins and Maureen, all people he’s lying to, people he’s avoiding like the plague just because he can’t get a hold of himself.

Gordon is actually the only person he’s really talked to, period, in over a year.

He doesn’t really have the wherewithal to process the frankly embarrassing rush of gratitude that colors his cheeks just then. “You’re probably right.”

“Oh, I’m usually right.” Gordon gives half of a tired smirk. “I’m a teacher. You get used to it.”

“I knew that.” Mark takes a deep breath and finally straightens up, tugging his sleeves down. He doubts that Gordon missed the movement, but at this point, he’s already so deep that it doesn’t matter. “You teach, uh, science. Right?”

“Biology.”

What’s _one person_ who knows he’s struggling? It’s not like Gordon knows where he lives. He’s got half a dozen people on his back who only seem to care about him when they think he’s going to jump off the roof.

_Not a bad idea._

No, wait, those are his friends – but fuck it, he’s too tired now to care. Fuck his friends. Fuck Paul, fuck Collins, fuck them all. They won’t miss him that much.

Gordon is okay, though.

He digs the pack of Marlboros out of his pocket and tentatively holds them up. “Right… You think anyone in there might want these? I’m not much of a smoker…”

* * *

 

There are times (most of the time, actually) that Mark spends every waking moment agonizing over Roger Davis. His hair and his eyes and his laugh, his scowl, his approval, his affection, their relationship… It all spins like a sickening wheel and he hates himself, and he loves Roger desperately, and he doesn’t know how to reconcile it all.

And then there are times where Roger doesn’t exist at all.

He _lost_ it. He doesn’t know _how,_ but it’s not in his pocket where it belongs and there’s no little bump for him to rub his fingers anxiously over, to rush into the bathroom and flick over his wrist, hands shaking like a junkie’s, God he’s so _fucking stupid_ this is ridiculous! This is _ridiculous_ and why is he shaking so hard, and where the _fuck_ is it!

He’s tearing apart his room, boxes overturned, film reels and old newspaper clippings and blurry photographs of Roger and Collins and Benny toasting the New Year strewn carelessly across the floor. Under the bed, under the mattress, inside each of his dresser drawers – he checks and re-checks the wastebin by the door even though there’s nothing in it because he hasn’t been fucking writing anything that he feels comfortable lying around, even in the trash.

Underneath the panic he knows this is too much, that he’s going to get caught if he keeps freaking out like this.

But it’s got it’s hooks in his skin and it’s pulling and pulling, like the eyes at Life Support, like Collins and his pointed little comments.

_Need a fix, huh? Maybe you can visit Roger’s old dealer, that’d probably do just as well._

He blinks back frustrated tears and pretends he doesn’t hear it, the incessant nagging in his ears. He hates that voice. It isn’t him. (It is him, though, sounds like him, could be him.)

Where is it? Where _is_ it? Oh God, if he’d dropped it in the hallway, or on the stairs, shit shit shit –

“Hey, Mark – woah. What are you looking for, man?”

He gives himself whiplash sitting up at the sound of Roger’s voice in the doorway. He’s looking around at the catastrophe that is Mark’s room in plain amazement, blinking. He’s wearing eyeliner again today, and it reminds him of April and heroin and wanting so badly to kiss him on the fire escape. It makes his stomach hurt.

“Nothing.”

Roger squints at him in disbelief. “Are you _sure_?”

“Yeah.” He clears his throat, tries to pretend his skin isn’t on fire. He wishes he hadn’t given those damn cigarettes away now. Anything not to have an anxiety attack right here, right now, with Roger watching him and clutching a piece of paper in his doorway.

It’s folded up into a tiny square. Mark focuses on it so hard that his head starts to pound.

“What – um, what is that?” he asks, hoping desperately that Roger won’t pick up on his stammer. He used to tease him about it all the time, but right now he almost looks serious, and Mark doesn’t want to risk catching his roommate on one of his perceptive days. “Been writing again?”

To his own ears, he sounds like he’s been eating sandpaper. It feels like something is eating at the lining of his throat – his panic or maybe stomach acid, who can tell?

Roger slowly turns his attention back to him, but his eyebrows are up in his hairline. Fuck. “Nah, not really. I just, uh – here.”

He makes a frustrated sound and shoves the folded-up square at Mark without explanation. Mark takes it tentatively, still tensed and crackling like a live wire, and pretends that he cares about what’s inside for a good five seconds before nodding and shoving it into his pocket.

Roger’s eyes follow his hands as they start their pawing again, darting once more around the room. His voice rises incredulously. “So you’re just destroying your room for… no reason? For fun?”

“It’s nothing,” Mark grits out, and has to pull his arm back before the sleeve starts riding up. It’s not under the bed, anyways, he’d already checked… hadn’t he? His head is swimming. Roger is watching. _Shit shit shit_ –

“Do you think I’m stupid or something?” Roger takes a (menacing, probably unintentionally, still makes Mark flinch though) step into the room, bristling for a fight. “What the hell is wrong with you lately?”

What _is_ wrong with him? Mark doesn’t want to know, doesn’t want to think the words. He’s better, it’s over, it never happened. He left all of the papers back in his old bedroom, all of the evidence.

He’s _fine_! Roger can fuck off!

“Mind your own business, Roger. I said it was nothing.” He forces himself to glare and clench his fists, to keep his voice steady, but he can hardly even maintain the anger when there’s no knife in his pocket, nothing to keep him grounded. When had he even started depending on that crappy gas station knife, anyway? The one he got fucking mugged for?

When he finds it he’s going to get rid of it, he decides. He doesn’t need to depend on anything. Not his knife. Not Roger. Not even Gordon.

At least Gordon hadn’t barged into his room and started interrogating him.

“Oh, you’re not my business now?” Roger’s got that bare-teeth expression on, the pained one he gets when he’s trying to restrain himself – and failing, miserably. The part of Mark that isn’t hyperventilating is achingly guilty for upsetting him. (Not that it takes much to upset Roger, not that it’s his fault, not that Roger even probably cares that much.) “Since when, Mark?”

He can’t help it, though. He scrambles to his feet, voice climbing despite himself. “Since right now! Please just – leave me alone, I’m fine! Are you happy?”

“Are you?!” Roger chokes back a laugh, pushing his hair out of his eyes and approaching him again. Mark backs into the wall in alarm. Roger grabs him by the biceps and he fights back a groan at the dull flash of pain from his cracking scabs. “Well?”

“I don’t _have_ to be happy all the time! It’s not my fucking job. Besides,” he gasps, struggling to breathe. He wonders if Roger can tell he’s suffocating. Roger is so _close_ to him but he doesn’t want to kiss him, for once, just to sprint as far from him and here as possible.

“You’re imagining things. I’m fine.”

He wishes it was true.

_I wish I was dead._

That one might have been him, he isn’t sure anymore.

“I don’t know how you fucking thought I wasn’t going to notice! Where’s the camera, Mark?” He’s on a roll now, bright red and teetering dangerously into “gonna cry” territory. Mark thinks his chest is caving in again, wonders how that’s even possible when it was already in ruins. He hasn’t seen Roger cry since Mimi died. “Paul called, he was worried about you, _Collins_ is worried about you, Joanne hasn’t seen you in _months_ – Maureen thought you were doing drugs, I told her you weren’t but _are you?_ Because –”

Mark cuts him off in the middle of his rant, grabbing his hands and harshly tearing them away, shoving him. “Fucking hell, Roger, I said get _out!”_

Roger stumbles back a step, dumbstruck. Time freezes. Mark’s racing heart is the only thing he can hear, blood rushing in his ears, trickling down his arms beneath his sweater.

It’s really not sweater weather anymore.

“You know what – fuck it. I was just trying to help. Do what you want.” Roger steps back towards the door with a dry, angry snort. When he turns to storm away at last, slamming the door in his wake, Mark sags against the wall and lets out a shaky breath into his trembling hands.

He’s never, ever in his life yelled at Roger like that. Not when he had his tantrum and ran off across the country last year. Not even when he caught him stealing from his wallet, years ago, shaking and desperate for a high.

He stares down at his dirty socks, feeling sick. A strangled laugh tears from his throat.

The knife lies innocently at his feet.

He bends down to pick it up – God knows he’s going to need it, now – and Roger’s note falls out of his pocket and onto the floor, forgotten.


	9. Detour

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like the weeks go by so much faster now that I’m actually updating this thing regularly… it’s like, where does the time go? Thanks again for the smattering of reviews I got on the last few chapters, and I hope you’ll review this one too – tell me what you think! Reading through the plot I have all planned out in my black book, which I initially wrote when I was 15, I’m pretty sure that this fic is not going in it’s originally intended direction… at all. Still! I have a lot of hope for it.

He’s staring at the paper. He’s staring at the paper and his hands are shaking. He’s staring at the paper and his eyes are itching and his arms are bleeding through the gauze.

The knife lies abandoned in the corner, open and still glistening vaguely red in the dim lamplight.

Mark can’t seem to exhale. The breath is burning somewhere in the cavern of his chest.

The ink already scrawled there is all blurring together, incoherent, monstrous, a hideous manifestation of what’s in his head.

He’s staring at the paper, and the words won’t fucking come.

* * *

 

Mark is still feeling like an incredible piece of shit the next day when, out of habit, his feet carry him out of the apartment and around the block towards the community center.

It’s not that he wants to go to the meeting, really. At all. Ever.

It’s not even that he wants something to do.

He wants to stay in bed forever. He wants to lie down and viciously think himself into a corner, mercilessly remember every line and shot and shitty, ill-conceived plotline he’s ever made with his own two trembling hands. He wants to suffer for this.

Roger isn’t supposed to cry over him. It’s the other way around! It’s _always_ been the other way around, okay?

He did something fucking wrong, again, and he should pay for it.

Roger doesn’t storm off to punish people, that’s the thing. He only runs away when he knows he’s about to cry. When something gets to be too much to handle. Mark knows him too well to buy his ‘ _dramatic parting words_ ’ routine.

It hurts to think that _he’s_ become too much to handle, by Roger standards.

Mark doesn’t want comfort or distraction or company. He just wants to feel understood, for five minutes. He wants to feel not so alone, not so helpless.

Which is how he finds himself back in the empty lot behind the community center.

The lighter is clenched nervously in his fist.

Gordon looks guiltily up from a cigarette. He coughs. Mark can feel himself grinning, despite the way it makes his throat ache. “Hey.”

It’s pretty fucked up that he feels like he’s betraying himself whenever he feels happy about anything, lately.

“Hey. Back so soon?” Gordon coughs and drops the stub onto the pavement, putting it out with his boot. He’s looking sort of pale, even for him, and years of living with Roger have made Mark hypersensitive to every chill in the air, so he unzips his jacket without a second thought.

“Got bored.” He shrugs it off and holds the worn bundle of faded flannel out at him, shaking it; when Gordon raises an eyebrow, he raises one right back, until the taller man can’t help but smile reluctantly and take it. “Smoking?”

It’s not quite teasing, but not accusatory. Mark is too worn out right now to accuse anyone. Even himself.

_I wouldn’t go that far…_

His smile slips a little. He fights it.

Gordon manages to look sheepish. “Well, Paul didn’t want them…” He pauses, considering, and then laughs shortly. “And I’m having a _shit_ day.”

“Me, too.” Mark sidles up beside him and leans against the brick, closing his eyes and finally, finally relaxing.

* * *

 

Maureen has known Mark since he was sixteen and still tripping over himself trying to learn the tango in a misguided effort to seduce the Rabbi’s daughter.

(Nanette was actually a raging lesbian, so it was hopeless to begin with – but, to be fair, she and Maureen were probably the only ones who knew that at the time.)

They were neighbors, once upon a time – Maureen’s family moved to Scarsdale from Hicksville, Ohio smack dab in the middle of their sophomore year of high school, and her family met Mark’s with a suburban sort of smile-through-your-teeth passive-aggressive disdain that practically forced them to become best friends.

In hindsight, he’d always been a little on the depressed side.

She nurses a glass of Moscato, tucked into the corner of the couch with her legs stretched out in front of her and a frown set deep in her face. _Stop worrying_ , she tells herself, _Mark is fine. He’s always fine._ Despite herself, though, she can’t stop herself from thinking back in circles to the _first_ time Mark had stopped talking to her altogether.

She should have seen it then. She should have probably seen it this time, far sooner than she did.

Collins had said to trust Roger to handle it, but Maureen hardly trusts Roger as far as she can throw him when it comes to Mark’s happiness. Roger is Santa Fe and addiction; Roger is the guy who constantly let Mark recede into corners, oblivious to the way his roommate watched him forlornly from beneath his eyelashes.

Maureen has known Mark _way too long_ not to know that look.

And Roger just _doesn’t notice_. It’s ridiculous. Ludicrous. Maureen could throw a thousand adjectives at Roger’s head and he probably wouldn’t even glance at her. His skull’s just that fucking thick.

It’s like one of those _godawful_ romance novels that Joanne pretends she doesn’t have stashed in the nightstand, and that Maureen pretends she doesn’t read in secret when Joanne’s at work. Except that it’s Mark, and it’s Roger, so the plot’s going nowhere.

He was seventeen and pale and thin and Maureen wondered where he was for a week, throwing pebbles at his bedroom window in the dark, incessantly ringing the Cohen’s doorbell.

She’d thought he was pissed off at her, or having a meltdown over college apps. She was fully prepared to chew him out for either one, to smack him on the chest and screech that he’d abandoned her.

She had a whole monologue planned out for the occasion.

Mark came home with limp hair and dead eyes. She’d held him in bed for hours that night in silence, his head tucked under her chin, her eyes swimming; in the hallway, Cindy whispered anxiously into the phone about her baby brother and his bottle of pills.

They hadn’t talked about it at all. Not ever. The color returned to his cheeks, eventually, and when the smiles started to look effortless again she told herself that it was over.

Nothing to worry about. Mark can handle anything.

She never found out what happened to him, but she could guess. It sends a sick gut-tension rippling through her, a constant dissonance. Every time she starts to drift she’s brought back to uncertain reality with a painful jolt.

Maureen’s always been a tad more anxious than she makes herself out to be.

Mark is one of the only people who knew that.

But Mark’s not answering her calls… She sets the phone back in the receiver uneasily, staring at it for a long time. Joanne is out, probably getting takeout and pretending that Mark and Roger’s apartment building is on her way home just so she can peer up at the fire escape and hope she’ll glimpse them. Maybe she’ll knock on the door. Maybe Roger will let her in, moody as ever, tell her _he doesn’t know where Mark is_ for the fourteenth time this week, so _why does she keep asking?_

Maureen wants to know, though! Where is Mark? What is he doing? Where is he _right now_?

It’s the first time in years that she honestly couldn’t guess.

She stares into her wine glass, watching it fizz happily, and wishes that she had the nerve to call Mrs. Cohen up and invite her for the weekend. Maybe then Mark would have to show his face, and they’d get to the bottom of all this. He’d have no choice. No one says no to Mrs. Cohen, not if they want to be able to hear tomorrow.

God, that woman’s voice is shrill. Always has been. She grew up listening to her wailing at her son to come in for dinner… The last time Maureen had had to see the woman was at her engagement party a year ago, and she’d been pleasantly tipsy then so it’s all kind of a blur, but Mrs. Cohen’s voice had almost been enough to sober her up all by itself.

She still hasn’t taken more than a sip. Drinking alone really is no fun…

Maureen also tends to wilt when she’s not being watched. Living alone hadn’t suited her at all.

Joanne should be back home soon, though. The apartment just feels so vast and empty when she’s by herself, without Joanne to keep her mind off it; of course, it looked nice, but everything is _white_ and _pristine_ and even Maureen’s bras strewn across the living room like a scandalous rainbow can’t make it seem lively right now.

Mark could be lying on the floor _dead_ for all she knows. God, Roger had _better_ be taking good care of her Marky, keeping track of him, or she’s going to stick her favorite pair of stilettos right through his miserable heart.

Collins is getting gray nowadays. She can’t help but think that, for once, he may have been wrong.

Roger is not enough. Mark needs so much more – she should know!

She’d feel so much _better,_ she thinks with a pout,if she just _knew_ whether or not he was still taking his damn medication.

She hopes to God the answer is yes.

“Mark…” she sighs into her glass, lipstick smudging the rim. “What am I supposed to do?”

She sets the glass back down, still full, and swallows. It’s sickeningly sweet. Not enough to rid the taste of ash from her mouth, though, at the thought of Mark so pale and thin and young in her arms…. A decade old monologue sits guilty in her throat as she hesitates and then finally, helplessly, picks up the phone.

Again.

Third time’s the charm, right?

* * *

 

He has no fucking idea when Mark slipped out, or how.

Roger wakes up with a start and realizes that yes, once again, Mark has beaten him to the punch. He doesn’t understand! How can someone so utterly despondent still get up so goddamn early – how is he dragging himself out of bed when half the time Roger finds him curled up into a tiny, shivering ball that looks more like a pile of laundry than a fully grown man?

Mark is getting so thin, lately, Roger is scared to so much as nudge him in case he breaks.

If he did break Mark, Maureen would be the first to jump down his fucking throat. In fact, he’s pretty sure he doesn’t have long until he’s in deep shit for not knowing where the bastard’s run off to today – she’s been calling every hour she’s not working for days, and half of him wants to call Collins up just to tattle on her.

He’s not in his room. Roger had checked. (Twice. Okay, three times.) He’d even looked in the closet. He’d poked his head into the bathroom, and (with trepidation) behind the shower curtain for good measure. He’d checked _his own_ closet, as if he thought Mark had spontaneously acquired some incredible stealth that would have allowed him to sneak into Roger’s room while he was sleeping and hide himself away… for some reason.

Mark is nowhere to be found. The loft is empty and increasingly, unnervingly quiet, except for the thud of Roger’s boots on the floor and his under-breath curses..

It’s wearing on his nerves. The pressure. The unbearable silence.

Roger doesn’t do well in silence. He needs the tapping pen, the rustle of the newspaper – the endless stream of garbage he plucks out of his guitar strings – anything. Anything!

Mark knows that. He used to leave the tap dripping, sometimes, when Roger was passed out on the couch after a long night of _practicing with the band_ – which was almost always codeword for _getting fucked up_ (with or without the band) – because he knew that when Roger woke up at noon with a killer hangover and no idea where he was, the gentle _tap-tap-tap_ would be all he could stomach.

Mark used to do a lot of little thoughtful things like that, actually.

The fact that he hasn’t been, recently, is sort of worrying… Or maybe Roger’s just being a self-important asshole.

Mark _could_ have better things to do than trot after him and remind him to take his AZT.

But that’s… just not like him.

There’s no way to put it that doesn’t sound horrible, Roger thinks to himself bitterly. He picks the phone up on the first ring and slams it back down into the receiver before Maureen can even start questioning him. His head is already pounding, and he’s only been awake twenty minutes. Now is not the time for Maureen to start in on him like he, personally, is the cause of all the world’s woes.

All of this has reminded him too much of the early, dragging days of withdrawal, sick with anticipation.

It’s also reminded him that he and Maureen? Had never really been friendly.

Mark is nowhere to be found. He didn’t take his camera with him.

Roger viciously chews his thumbnail.

He doesn’t know what to _do_. Collins isn’t here to tell him. Maureen won’t know, either. He doesn’t have time for hysterics…

Should he stay here, pacing in frustrated circles in the hopes that Mark will reappear unscathed? The vivid image of Mark, face covered in blood, keeps flashing behind his eyelids and he wants to kick himself in the shins for taking his knife back.

It had _seemed_ safest, at the time, but now Mark is out there somewhere by himself and essentially defenseless, and Roger just wants to pick him up and _shake_ the sense into him.

Where the hell is he going? What is he doing? Why hadn’t he even shouted a goodbye as he left? Left a note, at least? Jesus!

Well… okay. Maybe Roger knows the answer to that last one.

 _Why the hell did I think yelling at him was a good idea? Yelling at_ Mark _?_

_God, I am an asshole._

Mark doesn’t yell. _He’s_ yelled at Mark plenty of times before, though. He knows how to hurt him. He knows where it stings the most, and where to stick his fingers in and twist when he needs to make him let go – but last night had been about Mark, not him.

He should have known better.

He’s such a coward. Always running away, when the going gets tough – when it’s Mark, all of a sudden, who needs someone to drag him out of the hole he’s digging himself. Things couldn’t go on the same way forever, and Roger should have fucking known. He’s been playing the victim for far too long now.

If it’s Mark’s turn to hurt, then Roger’s repayment starts _now_.

(He can almost see Collins nodding in agreement.)

Grimacing, he shoos the vision of his old friend from his mind. _Focus._ If he were Mark, upset and camera-less… where would he go?

Some selfish part of him still just wants to write it off. Mark’s having a bad week, a bad month… Mark can handle his own shit, hasn’t he always?

But it’s not just him that’s been noticing.

The phone starts to ring again, and he groans out loud, almost glad to be startled from the rut in his mind. He grabs his jacket off the back of the couch and shrugs it on. His keys are cold and solid in the pocket.

God, he needs a fucking cigarette. He wonders idly if he should pick some up on the way back from – wherever he’s going.

_Think. Think Mark Cohen thoughts._

But shots and angles aren’t applicable here.

Fuck. Fuck. Pay _attention!_

Mark’s missing. The last time Mark went missing, he turned up in an alleyway, and Collins had said something about stitches later that made Roger’s stomach turn. _No_. _Focus_. Mark is probably still shaken… that part Roger’s sure of. It’s his fault – the guilt is gnawing steadily at his innards, but he’ll deal with that later.

Mark _probably_ wants to blend in the background right now, lick his wounds in the relative privacy of the back of the room… which means…

Mark’s _probably_ at Life Support. That, or stowed away somewhere – the Life, maybe, if they’d let him in – with his fucked-up screenplay and pen in shaking hand.

Fuck, why not? It’s as good a place as any to start.

He slams the door behind him just as the answering machine beeps.

“Roger, god damn it, I know you’re there! Is Mark home? Tell him to call me –”

* * *

 

Things are just _so easy_ with Gordon.

It’s sort of amazing, the contrast – Gordon, he doesn’t have to yell, doesn’t have to make Mark feel like shit just to get a point across. Maybe it’s _not_ Gordon, maybe it’s _Roger_ – but he’s getting sick of making all these comparisons in his mind.

(His head’s too full of crumpled suicide notes and the jumbled echoes of Roger’s angry voice, words he can’t even understand anymore.)

It doesn’t matter if the words don’t come to him, though, because the notebook is stashed away safe and silent beneath his mattress and Gordon is kneeling on it beside him, wrinkling his nose with laughter at something that he said, and Roger isn’t home, and everything is fine.

“No, I don’t think that’s mold,” Gordon is saying drily, and Mark remembers belatedly that the whole reason Gordon is here with him in his bedroom right now is because he’d mentioned the stain on the wall beside his bed, which may or may not have been giving him cancer. “Though I’m not surprised you thought so, if you seriously worked for Buzzline…”

He’s vaguely disappointed, but fights back the accompanying sigh and forces out a dramatic groan instead. “I knew I should never have told you that.”

Gordon is still examining the wall, but he’s wearing the shadows of a smirk. “Mutant mold epidemic, I think the segment was called…” He’s got that steadying hand on Mark’s knee, where it’s been all day, and Mark has to keep reminding himself not to grab it and thread their fingers together.

_When did you get so pathetic?_

The voice is still nudging and needling, but he’s not alone right now, and he _won’t_ let it get to him. Not now. Not this time.

“This is a pretty nice place?” Gordon comments eventually when he realizes he’s not going to get a response, turning back to Mark with that contemplative look he gets when they’re alone. It’s not predatory, or condescending – he would know, because he’s been on the wrong end of both too many times to count since he’d moved here.

No, he’s just… looking. Searching.

Mark finds that for once, he sort of likes the attention.

“It’s a shithole,” he corrects him with a wry smile he hadn’t been sure he’d be able to muster. “But our landlord’s not so bad. Anymore.”

“Anymore. That you know of,” Gordon echoes with a quiet snort, in a cynical way that’s becoming increasingly familiar. Mark realizes that it makes him feel warm.

He wrinkles his nose to disguise the grin creeping onto his face. “That I know of,” he admits.

Maybe it’s just because he’s gone so long without letting himself want it. It’s like, reverse psychology or something… if you try hard enough not to want it, maybe it will come to you?

Gordon hadn’t exactly come to him, but if he’s honest, that’s the way he prefers it.

This is also one of the first times that Mark’s been allowed to make the calls. He’s thoroughly enjoying it – he’s got Gordon’s phone number folded up in his pocket, a brand new lighter for the cigarettes he doesn’t have (because _“I felt sorry for the other one. Rest in peace.”_ ) and his knife, which he hasn’t touched at all today, except to reassure himself that it was there.

Dark eyes keep following his wrists when he moves them. It’s only a matter of time before someone as sharp (and, well, suspicious) as Gordon broaches the subject, and he’s dreading it, but that’s okay.

“You’ll get used to it,” Gordon repeats, smirking, as he always does. _I’m usually right,_ words Mark has remembered over and over obsessively since he said them, so that they’re worn right into his brain. Something new to cling to, to hope for. He’s being pathetic again, isn’t he? He doubts anything will even come of it.

But that’s okay, too. Really. He’s got his camera, he’s got his knife. He’s got a few bucks in change that he’s picked up off the sidewalk the past few days. He’s in control.

Today, he’s in control.

And Gordon is on his bed.

Mark doesn’t necessarily _want_ this to be something it’s not – it’s just, his imagination is fevered lately. Starved for human contact. When all he’s had is his own running commentary, for God knows how long, everyone who makes eye contact with you seems like a lifeline. Like an option.

But that’s sick. Gordon’s not a puppet, he’s a person. With a personality. With a really sarcastic sense of humor and a really, really warm hand suddenly clasped gently around his.

“Um!” He manages, and very pointedly ignores the way his heart skips a beat.

 _Rebound,_ the voice chants sweetly. _The word you’re looking for is rebound._

_Oh, wait – you can’t rebound from someone who never would have fucked you in the first place!_

Mark shakes his head furiously, humiliated. No. No more thinking of Roger. _Roger doesn’t even like you. This is your own fucking fault, and you know it, and he knows it. He doesn’t care what you do to yourself. He shouldn’t have to!_

If he did, he would have noticed by now. Right?

Right…?

He’s standing at the edge of a very ugly precipice, lungs all but collapsed already. Pity, he’d only just gotten them working again.

He feels his face slowly reddening, but Gordon is narrowing his eyes down at the first of the angry red lines peeking from beneath his sleeve. Mark sees the damning words falling from his lips before they even reach his ears.

“…You do clean these out, right?”

He does. Well. He tries. Usually not until later, until he’s sure Roger isn’t going to barge in on him to take a piss, find him holding his bleeding wrist over the sink –

Oh, God, that is so not the point right now.

Gordon knows, _Gordon has always known_ , Gordon has that damn sympathy in his eyes again and Mark can’t stop his breath from hitching like he’s been kicked in the chest, clutching at the ruins like he can stop them from falling out of him in the panic.

“I – yeah,” he manages, voice wavering. “Yeah, I – do.”

There’s no point in denying it. The evidence is all right there, and Gordon _knows_ it.

“Can I see?” Bluntly, fingering the end of his sleeve and peeking critically at what Mark knows is only the tip of the iceberg.

Okay, Gordon doesn’t know, Gordon _thinks_ he knows. But Mark, he’s so much worse. He’s so much more pathetic than anyone could possibly guess.

Oh, God, if he sees –

The shame already has his skin crawling, but he nods. Because that’s just what Mark does. Because Gordon just makes things so easy, and he wants to hang onto that strand of thought for as long as he possibly can, wants to believe it for a little while longer, at least until tonight when it’s just him and Roger and closed doors and silence.

Smiling thinly, Gordon nods and tugs him closer to the light. He doesn’t gasp when he pulls the fabric slowly, carefully back, but Mark would have to be blind not to catch the way his eyes widen the way Roger’s do just before he starts swearing.

There are never enough bandages. Mark has seen his arms a million times – could point out what each and every scar was for, but not when he made it – and he knows. He _knows_ they look horrible. He _knows_ he’s never going to be able to wear a t-shirt again.

He knows he should be bandaging them more often, keeping them clean, keeping his sweater from sticking to his skin.

Gordon holds his arm like he would a delicate specimen, eyeing it doubtfully. Mark gets the feeling that he’s a lot more concerned than he’s letting on – then again, he is a teacher, and that probably comes with the territory. “Some of these look infected…”

“It’s fine,” Mark tells him, and he feels like it’s okay that he’s subdued. Anyone would be in this situation. Right? He’s not making that up?

He’s allowed to be scared.

He feels so bare, so vulnerable. He feels like he had lying in that alley, pleading for death, except now he thinks he might actually want to live at least a while longer, to see what comes of this.

He’s so glad Roger isn’t home right now. Fuck if he cares where he is, so long as he doesn’t interrupt this.

“It’s not fine,” Gordon says, firmly, and it’s funny how someone who Mark has always known to be so suspicious can manage to sound so very calm. Gordon away-from-meetings is a Gordon that he really wants to get to know. His fingers graze gently over the thick, raised lines of his oldest scars, right at the crook of his elbow. Somehow, his skin erupts into gooseflesh. He shivers, and Gordon takes a steadying breath of his own. “But it can be.”


End file.
